A sad comedy turned out in Serebrennikov. Life, shown from the side of a thirty-year-old "living dummy" for investigative experiments, looks quite lonely.
The film is all made up of small details. There is no plot as such - it's just a set of sketches, moments from the lives of all the characters, which by chance (or because of the thirst for earnings) fate brought together in one room and forced to interact with each other.
The main character of the film is loneliness. Each character lives on its own. The members of the investigation team deeply do not care about each other and the cases they investigate. They communicate and work together in inertia, out of politeness and social decency.
Even living with his mother Valya has no feelings for her. He is the only one who dies (or who dies). This is especially emphasized by the scene where the mother calmly enters his room, even in the most intimate moments.
Since the characters are mostly not evil people, their interaction is full of all sorts of curious little things, so it is interesting to observe the processes.
The main scene of the film is a monologue by the captain (Hayev) in a Japanese restaurant, which itself is an allegory of people building fake facades. Like Mamonov in Dust, the captain brings everything together and gently pushes the viewer to interpret what happened in the film.
A live, social film that doesn’t look like anyone else. It's a bit of a mess, but he can be forgiven a lot for his courage.