Paul Giamatti plays an actor who, on the eve of the premiere of Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya, does not feel well and begins to understand that he does not get the central role at all as he would like. One evening, after another not-so-successful rehearsal, he finds an ad in a magazine about a company ... that is engaged in the extraction of souls from the bodies of people. Absolutely everyday text in advertising says that this procedure will help get rid of stress, tension and gloomy thoughts. With maximum skepticism, the actor goes to the office of the company, where he meets Dr. Flinstein, who promises to rid our hero of everything that is associated with the concept of “hard at heart.” Having signed the necessary papers, the actor lies in a terrible mixture of a barochamber with a juicer and after a few minutes he is shown the result - his soul, the size of a pea. After that, he gives it to a special warehouse of the company, where the souls of thousands of people are stored deep frozen in sterile, glass flasks. For a while, literally, the soulless actor of the theater sluggishly tries to play at the next run, and nothing comes of it. Returning back to the company, he does not want his soul back, but rents the soul of a Russian poet, who for verification turns out to be the soul of a girl working in a factory in Russia. This time, the rehearsal is incredibly successful, everything from the actor is delighted, he himself rejoices, but after a while, news begins to come to him - painful children, dilapidated apartments and other memories of the former owner of the "goods". Realizing that the game of transferring souls has gone too far, the hero comes to the company again and asks to return his soul to its place. The trouble is that while the actor tried on soullessness and someone else’s soul, the flask with his own soul was taken to St. Petersburg. For what? A Russian actress needed talent, and she asked her dad to bring her the soul of an actor from America. The hero miraculously finds Svetlana (Dina Korzun), a girl who literally transported his soul across the border and together they go to the cultural capital of the former USSR to return to the actor what belongs to him by right.
Needless to say, the film is unusual. Charlie Kaufman usually writes such stories, but this time he did not. To be honest, personally, I sat down to watch this crazy picture only for the sake of my beloved Paul Giamatti and seriously thought that it was likely that I would be hard to rewind most of the timekeeping. Who would have thought, suddenly it turned out that the work is not as pretentious as it could be. The director could just try to go out on the strangeness of the idea and “kaufmanism”, poking the viewer in the nose flasks with pebbles that should comically symbolize our souls.
Instead, we have a funny and serious allusion to our future. People are on the path of simplification of life and are ready for comfort to get rid of anything, including the most mystical part of human nature. We hardly think about the consequences, because the immediate needs seem much more important to us. Cut, tear, throw away, throw away or, as in our case, deposit, but not to mess around. It should also be noted that the writer has a remarkable imagination. Almost all the strange questions were given adequate (as far as possible with such a set-up) answers, the system of smuggling with the help of mules like Svetlana (soulless people who carry stolen souls inside themselves) looks original, despite the fact that it is partly based on the principles of drug smuggling. The details of the various side effects deserve special mention – being soulless and holding the soul of another person doesn’t look like the same problem. In the film, there are even drugs to reform the soul from its remnants and pills that help an alien soul to take root in a new body! The very idea that the soul is metaphysical, non-existent in reality, but still necessary for existence, the continuation of a person who can get sick and be amputated seemed to me very fascinating.
The casting of Frozen Souls was also better than I expected. In addition to Giamatti, which in this style looks as natural as possible and pleases with his talent the games of eccentrics, I liked the actress Dina Korzun (known to us for “Country of the Deaf”). Usually, the tandem of American and Russian actors almost always boils down to comedy, but this time we were given the opportunity to witness a dramatic duet. There’s a lot of counter-cultural humor here, though, especially in the scene where Paul and Deena are driving in a car around Peter and Deena is learning English through audio training. Paul's face simply defies description. Speaking of St. Petersburg. We went to shoot it, which is a rarity for foreign cinema, which constantly shoots Russia somewhere in Latvia. It happens in winter, so beautiful panoramas of frozen canals and ships standing in a layer of ice are attached.
Now for the things that didn't please. The first is the criminally small Emily Watson, who played the wife of a theater actor. Was it worth taking such a talented woman to sleep 90% of the time? Second, last, and most disgusting, where are all the other Russian actors? The perfect opportunity for dozens of our faces to shine on the world stage. I bet it's all about greed. Someone asked too much, and as a result, only Korzun agreed. Half the movie is made in bloody Peter! What more do you want, gentlemen?? They took and blew that opportunity.
"Frozen souls" is, of course, an experiment not about everyone, but it blows a pleasant, frosty breeze of freshness, which will certainly push many to interesting thoughts. Those who want something new should definitely look at this movie.
7.5 out of 10