A hospital near a monorail.A merciless war.The soldiers' grimness.The psychiatrist left his "psihushka" to seek means of securing his patients.The clinic is taken over alternatively by Chechens and by Russians,and made over into a battle scene.
The mad people:some are grovelling,others are grumpy,others grinning, contentious, fractious, petulant,forlorn, babyish,foul, fossils of disease.
The Chechen soldiers are portly,while some of the young ones are very handsome.
My favorite scene is the Chechens' song:heart-breaking and manly.It also offers a sample of the beauty and musical valences of that Oriental language.One of the best musical moments in cinema's history.
"Dom ..." is made of suavity and infinite tenderness.The story is limber.In depth,this flick about an amorous insane woman is a parable about the ambiguity of life.The score is a profusion of beauty and Oriental privacy.
Mrs. Vysotskaya is amazing as "Jana";the rest of the cast is first-class.
Visually,the movie is not as beautiful as many Russian movies are (e.g.,Utomlyonnye Solntsem).The photography is deliberately made to look like that of a documentary.The hospital is not grisly;"Dom Durakov" is not about madness in a clinical sense,nor war,nor love,for what love could be that;it is about the ambiguity of life,about the hidden infinite suavity.The hospital itself is a parable.It is a clinic of parable and symbol,not one of cruel naturalism.The aesthetics is one of insobriety,extravagance,fancy and powerful exuberance.
"Dom ..." features a pleasurable and plain cosmopolitanism:Adams and Chechen songs.
Konchalovsky is back in high form,with this work of contemplation and insight.
Tocilescu,the Romanian director,praised to the skies this film's richness.
