Reviews on movie Palata 6 (7)

It's a very bold project. Perhaps no one has ever filmed Chekhov’s works like this. In ' Shakhnazarov's planet' ' Chamber No6' presented very fashionable and modern. And it is not that the action is transferred to our time. Just when working with Chekhov, the author removed excessive trepidation, which made it possible to present the filmed work to the modern. Well, really, I did not expect when watching this tape to encounter elements 'mocumentaries' and cute surreal ragtimes.

I don't think we're thinking about modernity. Nope. Rather, an aesthetic pun that explodes all conventions and forms a kind of conceptual parable that can be correlated in essence with any time period and any state. Chekhov is really interesting. Vertkov and Ilyin add to his life.
However, such a progressive author’s view is not without flaws. If the beginning flies quickly promising a fascinating spectacle, then in the middle and the end, the decrease is noticeable. Let such a decision correspond to the original source, but for the picture itself it does not benefit. Even a pity that enthusiasm and napalm was not enough for the entire timekeeping.
6 out of 10

Very often in the reviews to the film adaptations you can find the phrase ' the book is better ', to which he is drawn to answer ' thank you, Captain Obvious'. The book is better at least because it is the primary source and it is in it that the author expressed what he wanted to tell the world. Yes, the book is better, which does not negate the fact that there are film adaptations that can be watched with pleasure, even if they are very rare. Much more often there are weak adaptations, well, it is difficult to put everything in the book into the film.
The same film is bad not only as a film adaptation, it is bad as an independent unit, without comparison with the original source. Transferring the action to the present... what can it be original, if you try (in this case it is doubtful). But combine it? No, sorry, that won't work. A format ' interview' added a bucket of tar in a barrel of tar.

What did we get in the end? Something absolutely illogical and unviable.
Modern people speak the language of the beginning of the last century. Yes, Chekhov’s dialogues are good, but could at least the most outdated expressions be replaced with modern ones without changing the meaning?
Khobotov freely says in an interview that he was jealous of Ragin, that he aimed at his place. The former head doctor calmly confesses to official crimes, theft, debauchery. Seriously? This is how you can approach a person with a camera, ask, say, tell us about how you worked, and hear in response: ' did nothing useful, stole alcohol, female staff and patients persuaded to sexual relations'? And all this in a calm voice and with a calm expression on his face.
Journalists make a film about the life of a psychiatric hospital. Well, there might be a neurological unit in it. In today’s world, they live in other institutions. And why is this clarification 'In room number 6, we have psychos lying there'. In the psychiatric hospital there is a room for mentally ill people. And the rest, sorry, for whom?

Further, it turns out that the former chief physician was best versed in 'female diseases' and took delivery. Oh, you're making a movie in real time. Even if a doctor decides, it is doubtful, to study for two so different specializations in medicine, he will not simultaneously be the head physician in a psychiatric hospital, which he does not like, and occasionally engage in obstetrics. He'll just go to gynecology.

Just a bluff. I think I could continue to list them, only I had enough for 20 minutes of viewing, because ' quality ' shooting does not come ' logic ' plot. Seriously, it's a failure.

It seems to me that the film adaptation of literary works can sometimes more vividly reveal the idea of the original and only in rare cases with success completely escape from the original concept, as in Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. In the case of the film “Chamber N6” directed by Karen Shakhnazarov, we have a retelling of Chekhov’s ideas, but in the translation to the present.
The beginning of the picture set in the right way and looked promising. Well-chosen actors surrounded by real mental patients, and even in what entourage scenery! It’s a wonderful opportunity to show House N6 in a realistic, modernized and reimagined way. However, the director takes a dubious step, using Chekhov’s almost verbatim quote as dialogue. Characters do not hesitate to say lines that contradict the environment of their time, and their play is more like a theatrical production. Well, it was possible to write chic dialogues corresponding to the spirit of the time, where it would be relevant in accordance with the time of satire, and the preservation of the original ideas.
Also, more than half of the film is not the film itself, but the reflections of the characters in the form of interviews on camera, which again are verbatim copies of the source, as well as shot on an amateur camera frames. This is how the exposition is created. However, it comes to a strange thing when a former doctor tells in an interview how he had a harem of nurses.
I have a few words to say about actors. Most of all, I liked the very textured Vladimir Ilyin and Alexei Vertkov. The local Nikita did not look very convincing. However, Evgeny Stychkin looked good enough in the role of Dr. Khobotov. It is a pity that the latter is given so few scenes. Unfortunately, most of the time, the film does not show the dialogue of the characters and the disclosure of their personalities, preferring to tell them directly to the forehead in the words of Anton Pavlovich from the lips of these characters in interviews. I will not say that the actors played well, as for me, such a structure simply did not allow them to reveal themselves well enough.
2 out of 10

To be honest, I have never been a big fan of Anton Pavlovich (although my father always read some volume from the complete collection), but his merits are undeniable. As a master of short prose, he pondered global, eternal questions over several pages. His style can be described as expressive compression, calmness, maturity. The vast majority of works also contain hidden irony, not always noticeable at first glance, barely perceptible satire. But despite all these charms, Chekhov’s stories fascinated me no more than a lecture on bone marrow nosology by a medieval healer. Therefore, I began to view with a rather cold predisposition, supported by the fact of belonging to the part of Russian cinema, which seems to be an art house, and seemingly for the general public.
What a surprise it was when, in the twentieth minute of the film, I had forgotten everything and watched with fear and surprise the rational insanity of Dr. Ragin and the rational judgments of Gromov’s irrational patient. It can be argued that all this is present in the literary source. Of course it is. In fact, the story "Chamber N6" is a dance. In the beginning, the mind, like a cavalier, leads madness along a clearly calibrated harmonious trajectory, demonstrating stunning skill and skill. But in the end there is a change of roles, and now madness frantically drags our (reader) defenseless, exhausted mind, vainly seeking support in the surrounding world, but, of course, not finding it. Apparently, this situation was widespread and the problem of “mind and insanity seriously worried the public (after all, in just a few years, “The Interpretation of Dreams”, which became a bestseller, will be released).

But Chekhov’s story (as opposed to the same psychoanalytic theories) is a completely autonomous, unique and very rare (at the time especially) view of the madness of the artist, author and creator. With it, in fact, the ascent of the absurd to the world literary Olympus begins. Kafka is still in elementary school, Beckett is not even ergo-sum, and Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is already creating a story, with all thoroughness, logic and consistency, denouncing the Total madness of the world, turned into chaos or one general psychiatric hospital, from which there is nowhere to escape.
Leaving aside the other literary merits of this remarkable work, let us proceed directly to the film adaptation. I do not undertake to denounce and criticize Shakhnazarov’s manner, since most of his techniques go unnoticed to my unprofessional eye. Still, it is possible that the postponement of the action to 150 years ahead should slightly increase the degree of satire over schizoid capitalist society, which absolutely all psychiatrists unanimously recognize as unhealthy - and in this regard, the perception of the work is seriously changing. Therefore, the semi-documentary method of shooting plays a double role. On the one hand, it does not escalate the tension, which is why the film sags, and the actors (reading “empty” monologues) have a hard time, but on the other hand, this approach allows you to see both the necessary components of madness – social and personal. We can observe both Ragin’s essences at the same time – the doctor and the patient, the member of society and the existent individual (and, indeed, long before the bourgeois Antoine Rocantaine).

What is the process of immersion in madness, what are its causes and characteristics? No one knows the exact answers. But all agree on one thing - the necessary method of treatment, which does not change after centuries (but not millennia - after all, once madmen were recognized as the chosen of God) - all the same - complete, unconditional, absolute isolation without the right to appeal.
“When society shields itself from criminals, mentally ill and generally uncomfortable people, it is invincible.”

The idea of film adaptation of the novel by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov occupied the director for almost 20 years. The first attempt at the film adaptation turned into the 91st film “King’s Assassin”, of course, in many ways overlapping with the film “Chamber N6”. As the author admits, the film became a work of self-mature, which appeared when it was destined, and not when its creator wanted it In essence, it is almost an arthouse, and the arthouse, as Shakhnazarov himself says, “it is easy to shoot.” These words in some way confirm the record shooting time. However, it cannot be said that this for the worse affected the quality of the film, which returned in its mood to Shakhnazarov of the early 90s.
The action of the film is transferred to our time and the viewer, who has not even read the story, from the very beginning is given to understand how it will end. Real psychotherapists in the preparatory stages of filming warned the director that Chekhov story about the head doctor of a mental hospital, who went crazy from communicating with a patient, simply invented, and such a story could not be. So the film would have been made with an attitude that the story in it is implausible, if only in one mental hospital in Yaroslavl the film crew did not find a living refutation: the former head doctor of the hospital, who went mad and was placed in the department of his own institution.

The author is most concerned about the question that Milos Forman posed in the film “One Flew Over the Nest”: who has the right to decide where the edge of insanity lies? In both films, the characters seem quite normal, except that one is too defiant, and the other, on the contrary, is lazy and phlegmatic (actor Vladimir Ilyin rightly received Silver George for his role). But only both, in the end, are taken for crazy. And who? “Society,” “order,” and “discipline.”
Those who claim that the director managed to make the film, as if cut from life, but without “black” naturalism are fair. It should be mentioned that it is in this film that Shakhnazarov masters the top of the pseudo-documentary genre. The director combines pure documentary films (interviews with real patients of the mental hospital at the beginning of the film); allegedly documentary interviews with people from the inner circle of Ragin and the actual artistic story about the head doctor. The mixing of these experimental approaches hides, in my opinion, a significant flaw in the film that destroys its integrity: the interviews staged by the director interfere with the perception of the artistic canvas. If not during the first one, then during the second one. In addition, the fame of the actors prevents them from being perceived in their roles. At one time, Shakhnazarov thoroughly worked with conventions in previous works, but now she is more repulsive than closer to the screen. Completely the opposite result, the director reaches the final of the picture, when the reliability of the coming catharsis reinforces the play of secondary characters: real patients of the clinic, not playing, but really living in the frame.
Summing up the above, we can say that Karen Shakhnazarov certainly managed to make a good film with the preservation of the vision of the original author and rethinking it through the prism of modernity, which the director has repeatedly done and did skillfully.

Yesterday I read the story of the same name and immediately decided to watch the film. I read this for the second time, the details were forgotten, but I will hardly forget the feeling of how this story was written. I wanted to talk about it in the review.

I began reading in the subway, standing in a crowded car, half-hanging, clumsily holding the handrail with my left hand. I finished reading at home at night, sitting in a small spot of light from a table lamp in the middle of darkness.
What in the day surrounded by people, what in the night alone, the feeling is absolutely the same - oppressive- creepy. There is no such feeling in the film.

Speaking formally, I note the inconsistency of the statement with the text. Nikita does not give the impression of a stupid idiot, angry and terrible. Gromov to a certain extent resembles the Chekhov character, but I did not see any mania of persecution or grimacism. Khobotov, apparently, does not specifically pronounce the phrases that Chekhov awarded him, clearly emphasizing the young doctor’s addiction to their use. And so on.

I liked Andrei Efimych. And the actor is great, and the writers did not change his character.
Directors ' finds ' look unconvincing and seem strained. Dancing – so in general, so implausible and artificial scene that spoils the whole impression of the film. And this Hollywood approach of a mentally ill girl to Ragin during a white dance - Chekhov's Andrei Efimych, seeing this scene, would shout: 'Go!'.

Informally, the film is worth watching. I do not have the competence to draw conclusions, but I am convinced that in order to allow myself to make Chekhov into a film, one must be no less a brilliant director than Chekhov is a writer. Hence, full of impressions from the film and Feelings from the book, which can not be written otherwise than with a capital letter.
I am grateful to the creators for this film, their version of the famous story, transferred to our days. I advise you to look, without going into details - then it will not be offensive for the original literary story.