Ward No. 6 (2009)
"Palata N°6" (original title)

Simultaneously nihilistic and heartening, Ward No. 6 is based on a story by Chekov, in which a psychiatric doctor becomes a patient in his own asylum. Updated to contemporary Russia, the ... See full summary »

Directors:

Aleksandr Gornovsky, Karen Shakhnazarov

Writers:

Aleksandr Borodyanskiy (screenplay), Anton Chekhov (short story),

Stars:

Vladimir Ilin, Aleksey Vertkov, Aleksandr Pankratov-Chyornyy

2 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Vladimir Ilin	...	Ragin
Aleksey Vertkov	...	Gromov
Aleksandr Pankratov-Chyornyy	...	Mikhail Averyanovich
Evgeniy Stychkin	...	Khobotov
Viktor Solovyov	...	Nikita
Aleksei Zharkov	...	Old chief physician
Albina Evtushevskaya	...	Darya
Anna Sinyakina	...	(as A.Sinyakina)
Alina Olshanskaya	...	(as A.Olshanskaya)
Stanislov Eventov	...	(as S.Eventov)
Dmitriy Gusev	...	(as D.Gusev)
Oleg Shapko	...	(as O.Shapko)
Ye. Golyandin
Yu. Soroka
S. Semenkova

Storyline

Simultaneously nihilistic and heartening, Ward No. 6 is based on a story by Chekov, in which a psychiatric doctor becomes a patient in his own asylum. Updated to contemporary Russia, the film is a cocktail of anxieties and riddles, showcasing how easy it is to become what we fear most.

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Plot Keywords:

doctor | doctor as patient | mental hospital | amateur film | children | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Official Sites:

Official site [ru]

Country:

Russia

Language:

Russian

Release Date:

27 November 2009 (USA)

Also Known As:

Ward No. 6

Filming Locations:

Mental Health Nursing Home No. 3, Dmitrov Rayon, Moscow Oblast, Russia

Company Credits

Production Co:

Mosfilm

Technical Specs

Runtime:

83 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

Ragin keeps a poster of Vladimir Vysotskiy at home.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Vladimir Kozlov: Vladimir Vladimirovich Kozlov, born in 1979, on August 15.
Interviewer: For how many years have you lived here?
Vladimir Kozlov: This is... the fifth year.
Interviewer: Where did you live before you came to this nursing home?

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Connections

Version of Paviljon broj VI (1968)

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Soundtracks

"AKAPULKO"
Performed by Laima Vaikule
Music by Igor Krutoy (as I. Krutoy)
Lyrics by Viktor Pelenyagre (as V. Pelenyagre)
Played at the New Year party

User Reviews

the middle section

Film and Life. Ficcion and Documentary. Here's two pairs of concepts which could, if we'd like, be placed on opposite corners of the labeling maps. For that same reason, these are concepts which intersect, come close to being confused and considered the same. Each of these two pairs holds inside it the magic of a magnetic repulsion/attraction. Maybe that's why so much has been said and written and filmed as to what film borrows from life (and how life can be affected by films). Also how thin is the difference between wanting to document something and creating a story that is already in the creators eye.

Shakhnazarov seems to be a dislocated guy. Someone born within the values of the great soviet school, but who lost that context early in his career. Today he makes disembodied soviet films. And also he doesn't really represent any of the two major soviet contributions to cinema (leaded by Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, respectively). For this, i don't think i'll ever watch one of his films that does more than merely amuse me in how clever were the intentions behind it.

In this case, what he wanted to do was not novel, but it's not very well done either. He starts the film presenting us with a series of interviews to real ill people from a real mental institution. Than he delivers a fiction, with fiction characters modelled after the real ill people, and acted in the same physical place, the hospital. This is actually a very clever idea. The interviews place us in the world of the mental cases, so we need no more establishing of the world of the film. So, we get fully inside the film and that's something rarely done in such a clear effective way. The problem is that nothing else is worth your time. there is a very literature driven approach to the dialog writing, and that kills the film, which is also not carried well enough by the performances. Dialogs or acting are the things that can carry such a film. Non exists with quality here.

The closing scene is as clever as the initial one. Real patients meet fictitious ones, and they dance, with mixed pairs. Documented reality merges with fictionalized reality. The entry, and this last sequence almost redeem the lack of anything else in the film.

My opinion: 2/5

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