Press and blog quotes

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 Blog quotes 

 

It is hard to evaluate this film since it lies beyond ordinary reality: nontrivial point of view, timeless idea, ontological motifs instead of soundtrack act as props. I mean, questions concerning life are born on their own and stay deep in the film, coming out from time to time. That is why all viewers start thinking of eternal things. I would say this is not a film, but an art object on the border of reality. 

(26 April, 2010)

http://www1.voanews.com/russian/news/arts/Ward-No-Six-Oscar-2009-12-01-78272812.html

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The film is powerful, deep, touching…

Comprising endless number of monologues the film is not boring, annoying or tedious which is extremely difficult to achieve.

The actors are magnificent, especially Evtushevskaya and Vertkov, the latter, in my opinion, is the Shakhnazarov’s discovery, a true actor; there are not many ones of such kind.

(April 7, 2010)

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/1048385/comment/827371/                             

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Terrific. Deep. It strikes right in the heart. EVERYTHING is well thought-out in this film. Tragic, real, VIVID film…the atmosphere of general psychosis dumbfounds. And the pseudo-documentary style coupled with home video! The actors are amazing! Well, Ilyin has always been a genius. But Vertkov as Gromov is a discovery for me! He is talented, remarkable, recognizable. He somehow reminded me of Malcolm McDowell playing Caligula…

And of course, the New Year party and dancing at the mental hospital was something unbelievable. What characters, what glances…and for me the dance of Ragin and a “girl from swamp” was full of HOPE that “the best is before them”.

In a word – IMPRESSIVE.

(April 5, 2010)

http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/733837/post124070932/  

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Deep. You should look deep into the heart of the film to understand that it is not just a film but a masterpiece. Tragic, realistic, vivid. Nothing about it can be criticized. The atmosphere takes your breath away; this pseudo-documentary style coupled with quite ordinary narration and home video pieces is unbelievably true-to-life. The actors are amazing. I was flabbergasted by Ilyin. His eyes still make me startle and send shivers down my spine. And Vertkov. I virtually discovered him as an actor. He will achieve a lot with such a piece of talent.

The final episode of the film is even more intense than the first one. It’s like the last drop – you just cannot escape from this clingy atmosphere of a mental hospital. And this mental hospital is our life. The laughing girl is funny at first, then creepy and then you start begging to stop it because it’s unbearable. Hard, painful and terrifying.

Shakhnazarov’s film puts a lot of pressure on your mind. Sometimes it’s vague, “wrong”, and hard to understand. Some will reject it, and some won’t understand it. But there will be people, who will at least try to perceive the film, it won’t be easy though. This film means something different for every viewer. It’s difficult to discuss “Ward # 6”. Or should we? Perhaps it’s better to talk about this film with yourself.

10 of 10

(March 17, 2010)

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/433988/comment/793761/

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I think this film is about a man. It is absolutely about a man, his spiritual growth and decline, about his attempt to find a way out again, but there is no escape, and the man continues living... He knows everything, understands everything, feels everything...

Brilliant intuition and performance of Ilyin give this dramatic story a portion of light.

I have an extraordinary impression of the film. I don’t know anything to be comparable with this film, and I think there is no need in comparing.

(March 16, 2010)

cwww.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/1028670/comment/802849/

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An outstanding film, it got deep into my soul from the first frame... It enchanted and struck me, remained in my heart...

Moreover, this film symbolizes Vladimir Ilyin’s comeback as a great actor. His role is a great one. All in all, speaking of the cast, it was magnificent, it was as a huge perfectly coordinated symphony orchestra.

(March 16, 2010)

 

 

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/826584/comment/803063/

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This is a very good film in all respects. A remarkable film, I state this as a professional, I don’t know what more I can say. The film is interesting for its scenario, and for the brilliant work of the cameraman and the lighting designers. Of course, “Ward No. 6” is an excellent director's work. It is a great success!

(March 16, 2010) 

http://www1.voanews.com/russian/news/arts/Ward-No-Six-Oscar-2009-12-01-78272812.html

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In my opinion, the film tells us that there is no internal core for our people, hinting that this core is in faith, in religion.

Shakhnazarov is trying to tell about the crisis of the soul of our society. An idea is clearly stated in the film, that once a human is affected, put in front of suffering and injustice, he immediately breaks down and either becomes a murderer or falls into a mental clinic. Since there is no spiritual core, no basis on which to lean. In our society it is also like that.

(March 2, 2010)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/

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Watching such films is recommended for intellectual development; they are food for thought. They are bridges between the sacred scriptures and your souls. Of all the arts cinema is the most important for us in the promotion of spiritual ideas.

(24th February, 2010) 

http://fyodors1-2.livejournal.com/14416.html  

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As a professional who was familiar with the atmosphere of “houses of sorrow” as far back as in the USSR, I can confirm that the “spirit” of these institutions is captured very accurately... In Shakhnazarov’s film that atmosphere is not all missing. On the contrary, all the episodes outside the madhouse are, so to speak, imbued with it.

I can’t help saying about the actors. A cast for Khobotov is certainly a direct hit. Gromov is very good. And Ilyin, with his dull eyes, is absolutely unfeigned... Pankratov-Chyorny anyway fits perfectly into his role. Of course, that all displays an excellent mastership of the director.

“Ward No. 6” is a great and rare success. So thanks to Shakhnazarov for it.

(24th February, 2010)

http://isaak-rozovsky.livejournal.com/93121.html?nc=17 

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Amazingly subtle and difficult picture. Psychologically difficult. Painful to see. Terrible to see. Necessary to see. A film about living, thinking, existence.

Wonderful film. How Moscow is shown!

(24th February, 2010) 

http://sha-liapin.livejournal.com/37653.html

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After all, Shakhnazarov is one of my favorite directors. His “Zero City”, “Dreams” and “The Messenger”, let’s say, had an effect.

There is shown by simple means what Moscow is, and by “human” means – what a human is.

The film is a “must see” for everyone, because it is an art.

(February 24, 2010)

http://sha-liapin.livejournal.com/37653.html

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Now one can easily consider Vladimir Ilyin among the greatest silent actors after Tihonov. He is being so moving in his silence, so brilliant in the part of the mentally ill Ragin, or, on the contrary, the healthiest one… He is just ingenious in “Ward No.6”.

(February 8, 2010)

http://eine-geile.livejournal.com/80188.html 

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I expected The Chechov atmosphere to be driven away. But the spirit of Anton Pavlovich was present in each episode, each remark.

One should watch this film without interruption. Without skipping a dialogue, a gesture.

(February 8, 2010)

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/735411/comment/766729/ 

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The audience is supposed to know the text. Because only then the spectator is touched by Moiseyka with valenki and by the direct hit into the characters of Gromov and Ragin, and Pankratov-Cherny with his Moscow. And only then the parable about the Biryukov hermitage makes a greater impression, and Nikita in the image of a monk casts a certain Old Russian gloom, and the princess - the neighbour’s daughter – strikes at the heart so that it hurts and wouldn’t go away.

(February 8, 2010)

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/881171/comment/762899/

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I recognized ward No. 6 after more than half a century. It is made so careful and recognizable.

The same joys of ordinary people and the same joys of unordinary ones who “suffer themselves and burden others”.

(February 8, 2010)

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/429366/comment/652055/

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Everything is so philosophically deep and artistically true that you can’t stand aside. One MUST see this film to learn how to be sympathetic, to become more clever, to be more attentive to life…

Vladimir Ilyin acts in such a touching manner. The most “piercing” moments in the film are those with doctor Ragin in a full-face shot.

(February 8, 2010)

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/813653/comment/758641/

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“Ward No. 6” as a laboratory examination of society

One must see this magnificent film of 2009 despite the fact that it will never become fashionable.

To paraphrase a saying we can say: “no one can be safe from poverty or schizophrenia”. A chief physician of a mental hospital, doctor Ragin, somehow became a patient of the hospital. In principle, the whole plot of the film could come to that change of status.

The second layer ‑ mental hospital as a part of the state.

(5 February 2010)

http://vr05.livejournal.com/180905.html

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My kowtow is to Karen Georgievich for “Ward No. 6”. The film is really tremendous.

(5 February 2010)

http://vr05.livejournal.com/180905.html

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Vertkov (Gromov) ‑ magnificent; Stychkin (Hobov) ‑ a typical self-seeker, cynic and careerist, one of the Putin’s epoch’ effective managers; Pankratov-Cherny (Mikhail Averyanovich) fits his role perfectly, his character type is a “friend”. Mikhail Averyanovich withholds a debt of 20 000 and gets rid of Rakov after a trip to the games in Moscow...

(5 February 2010)

http://daynice.livejournal.com/278219.html?thread=1966027

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The film belongs to the cinema art, one can be quite sure that nobody of average audience understands it in the right way. They are likely to take “Ward No.6” as a sort of school theatre play.

The film is shot with a combination of incompatible art styles, from a documentary (the static camera for the mental hospital) to Chekhov’s play (all monologues are very close to the original ones) and to Fellini-like post-realism. Such a “multi-style” world of the film was necessary for the director in order to get far away from Ragin’s depression by stylistic means and let the audience avoid it.

A good movie, constructed in a clever way. The award is given justly. I enjoyed it. Bravo, Karen Georgievich! Non’e’ vero ma e’ ben trovato! Let’s cure Ragin, he has been suffering in a grave for so long, a poor man…

(February 1, 2010)

http://sirin21.livejournal.com/25044.html 

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Not a simple film, I liked it very much. I think that the last episodes show us why a situation like that can happen to a person – LONELINESS. A deep, closed eating oneself, grasping the fact that making dialogues with oneself, a person has left the world, closed oneself for it. And when the neighbor says that he picked the children up from school when she was staying with her drunk boyfriend and he even liked it, I recognized absence of demand for him as a guardian, a keeper, a father, a husband.

(February 1, 2010)

http://sirin21.livejournal.com/25044.html

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The film is a good one, I liked it. Shakhnazarov managed to transfer the action from pre-revolutionary Russia to our days without changing the plot. The dialogues are adapted for the script (for example, about Moscow traffic jams) but the whole stylistics is preserved. I’d like to point out that all the actors managed perfectly, without going to extremes. I liked especially Stychkin acting a young psychiatrist.

(February 1, 2010)

http://nikonenko.livejournal.com/55926.html

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A core thing

Let me make it clear directly, the movie is magnificent, it bites into the viewer so deeply that… well…that, of course, if one lets it to. Shakhnazarov re-located the action to our days – that, I think, to show that nothing has changed since the time Chekhov wrote his stories. Now, the cast is a real bomb. The movie is realistic through and through, even the so called lunatics are real. All in all Karen Georgiyevich made someone’s day. Again. Once more.

My score (don’t like ranking masterpieces, but)

10 out of 10

(January 21, 2010)

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/774303/comment/662045/ 

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A clash of paranoid trend peculiar to Russian intellectuals and spineless humanism of the intellectuals, and as a result we have two outcasts instead of one – a distracted student with lucid intervals and an enlightened doctor with intervals of distraction and depression. A portrayal of despair common with rootless intellectuals. And having introduced the real patients of an asylum into his movie Karen Georgiyevich emphasized the social despair - which by the way, I consider to be the key catch of the film. 

…It is a very deserving work, quite new, quite fresh and quite different from everything Shakhnazarov did before. Though the hand is seen: grotesque, metaphysics, social problems, humour... All present and correct. A “must see”, after all, not everything is made for fun.

(January 21, 2010) 

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/1/comment/606268/ 

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The actors perform stunningly (no surprise, for the lunatics are performed by real lunatics), quotations from The Ward (most of all the dialogues of the two main characters) set one thinking, they tug one’s heartstrings. Even after you’ve read the story the movie appeals to you, the dialogues (and the movie is made of dialogues) will astonish you with their deep philosophic message.

(January 21, 2010) 

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/496043/comment/608685/

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Very good. I was surprised by Pankratov-Cherny; I didn’t expect such an excellent playing. An evergreen plot, the excellent casting.

(January, 15 2010)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

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 I haven’t read the book yet, but to my mind, the film is just brilliant. IMHO, Ilyin’s part is the best one. Actually, I like all actors. The plot is to be considered as a rare one for the present. The film is a collection of dialogues. I see a very deep implication. There are no beautiful sights but there is no sense in using them! I give the film a strong 10 for the message. I haven’t seen any Russian film of such a good quality for a long period, except “Ya ostayus” and “12” (“Twelve”).

(January, 11 2010)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

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  All this is somehow burning, urgent from the political and social point of view… This film shows us once again the way it has always been like in our country, the way it is and will always be if we change nothing, if we hide from the reality, shut our eyes at everything, emerge into indifference… Naive? But, to my mind, there are more and more people who don’t want either to see or to know or to feel anytning.

I give many thanks to Chekhov, to Russian classics and to the modern film producers that they “knock with a little hammer at the door of every happy person” with the help of Anton Pavlovich.

(January, 8 2010)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

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Only true philosophers and the Russian literature lovers will appreciate and understand a film like that. Others – please, don’t worry. Let’s see how many awards and nominations it has got – oh, yes, I forgot – they all have been given to films like “Vse umrut…”

(January, 6 2010)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

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…The question of the film appreciation can be expressed in the elementary “to believe or not to believe”? And it will rely on the viewer how clear the main idea will happen to be expressed… And the film came out rather complicated than difficult. It doesn’t oppress the viewer with its problems so much as it makes one think about the world organization and about the problem of one’s own faith in future, about the kind of hope we are to have in order to manage with all that is happening around us.

(December, 29 2009)

http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/79/user/559977/comment/719327/ 

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Oh la la! It seems to me that Karen Georgievich is not fully aware of the film excellence (I’m joking!). It seems that the film was made by a person who had taken a film camera for the first time and started to film all in a row but that makes the film even better.

(December, 28 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/ 

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An original realistic form of presentation makes one believe the young doctor saying that the line between a “normal” and “abnormal” person is rather illusive.

Just think about your own impression of the film… In most cases, we, without lowering a periscope, one way or another sup the salty water of grief, weakening gradually our buoyancy.

(December, 28 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

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Ilyin in the film just amazed me. It is something unbelievable. I can’t understand how a person can act something impossible to act?! This absent-minded roving look… At some moment I even got scared by the idea that Ilyin could have had a stroke… I suppose, later I will feel likely to watch it again in order to think it over. The film is so unexpectedly fresh and up-to-date, though it was the story by Chekhov.

(December, 24 2009)

http://zukoro.livejournal.com/36309.html

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It is a good movie. Such a theme – the hollowness of life – is seldom touched on. It is narrated in a quiet, somewhat original way. No conclusions for the audience are made, leaving room for your own thoughts. The actors are interesting to watch.

(December, 23 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

An original realistic presentation that makes you believe the young doctor saying that the line between a “normal” and “abnormal” person is really rather illusive.

(December, 23 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

Chief physician of a mental hospital becomes its patient – how did it happen? As usual, Shakhnazarov has made a multiple-meaning social film. Ilyin in any role appeals to me.

(December, 21 2009)

http://arzybu.livejournal.com/13270.html

I liked the way the director managed to represent “the world in a million years” – in pictures and through the voice-over describing their “deserted cliff and on the top of it – Hobotov”. I also liked Ragin’s soundless video recordings. Ilyin acted so magnificently that words are of no need – he is all in glances and moves.

(December, 18 2009)

http://lena62.blogspot.com/2009/12/6.html

The present Shakhnazarov is an “alternative” film director in the highest sense of the word. But he is alternative in a fine and sophisticated way staying on such a high level of classic excellence, that a lot of people take him for just a good director of the Soviet film school.

To my mind, it is genius. And natural like everything of genius. But one of the most brilliant features is the accurate and subtle picture of Russia which hasn’t been changing for ages. And our terrible time has just multiplied its usual calamity by its dead lifelessness.

…I would say just one thing – go and see it! One watches the movie in one breath from the beginning to the end, and the film maintains the high hurdle set from the start. The final episode takes both the film and the spectator somewhere into the cosmos.

(December, 18 2009)

http://lukinskiy.livejournal.com/116080.html

Such people as Shakhnazarov are true representatives of intelligentsia – they loath the state of affairs, they go against the official line and are doing real work. Thank you very much, Karen, for everything you do. Good luck to you!

(December, 18 2009)

http://www.zn.ua/3000/3680/67140/

I liked “Ward No.6” immensely! Both main characters have been portrayed extremely well, to be more precise, lived through by Ilyin and Vertkov. It is clear that Ilyin and Pankratov-Chyorny belong to the old guard but it is so wonderful that there are talents like these among young actors. I enjoyed the “non-glamour” of the film which shows the breakdown and depression in all that the book and the film feature.

So the film is difficult, but it makes a person come to think about something deeper than all that the modern cinema is advocating.

(December, 16 2009)

http://madonna-lita.livejournal.com/11641.html

 “Ward No.6” is a masterpiece. Actually like everything Shakhnazarov makes.

(December, 16 2009)

http://madonna-lita.livejournal.com/11641.html 

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It sounds like a wonderful adaptation of the story, which is as usual with Chekhov, very moving. More and more stories MUST be out of synch with the so-called reality of our days and nights, because we actually live forward and backward at the same time. 

(December 14, 2009)

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/movies/27ward.html

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The director speaks of the Russian soul through seeming simplicity of the story. The shot shows it all: despair and deep hope at the same time, obedience and optimism, omni-perception and reach inner world with all its contradictions, delicacy and subtlety. The motion picture is beautiful and the attitude it evokes is an indicator of a person’s inward maturity to a large extent.

(December 9, 2009)

http://www1.voanews.com/russian/news/arts/Ward-No-Six-Oscar-2009-12-01-78272812.html

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Modern generation... got used that all conclusions at the end of the film are usually made for spectators and they aren’t overburdened with a serious problem – thinking by themselves. However this film leaves a lot of room for this problem… I recommend this film to all people whose mind isn’t softened that badly.

I liked the film. The topic of evanescence of being and inner world of an individual is rarely brought up as it is hard to deal with.

(December 8, 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

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This film is worth winning an Oscar at least out of regard for Chekhov’s memory, let alone the creative success of Karen Shakhnazarov. Opening night of a film based on the Russian classics is a delight by itself, because it took place in a country where creative life is seething, and within memory of the well-informed – publishers in Chekhov’s honor far from the country where this wonderful and bitter story was born.

(Desember 2, 2009) 

http://www1.voanews.com/russian/news/arts/Ward-No-Six-Oscar-2009-12-01-78272812.html

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It’s an astonishing film! And so unusually made: a mixture of a documentary and fiction. Brilliantly!

(December 1, 2009)

http://www.vesti.ru/videos?vid=251108

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I liked the film very much… the idea is exposed very well. It’s very pleasant to realize that such films can be shot in Russia.

(November 30, 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

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Personally, I’m not depressed by this film, quite the contrary, aesthetically and ethically it calls for a revolt – for rejection of disgusting things of everyday life. In the first sequences of the film – with true patient histories, and homemade Russian philosophical babble of “insane” Gromov (Aleksey Vertkov), and in post-insult sorrowful silence of “insane” Ragin (Vladimir Il’in), and in the eyes of “awfully” compassionate Russian women in the finale of the film – everywhere I find the will for sane humane life of Russia which is spacious in communication and communicative in its spaciousness. The film was shot in a reportage manner. But this is reportage of special kind, to paraphrase a famous name of a Czech anti-fascist, this is «a reportage with a “Chamber 6” on the Russia’s neck».  

(November 25, 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/  

Chehov – it is delicate, deep and wise. Shahnazarov has transferred the action of the writing to present days. His doctor listens to Visotsky. His doctor is played by Vladimir Il’in. You know, this actor… he can play an untidy, unkempt character, who is squalid and reserved. But my God! Isn’t he sexy for all that! Only Il’in can do like this. Shahnazarov has revealed this talent in him and in the end of the film a beautiful woman falls in love with Il’in’s character. Had the character been played by Panin or even Alen Delon, I would not have trusted, but I’ll trust Il’in.

(November 24, 2009) 

(November 12, 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/ 

 The strongest point of the film is dancing, absolutely!) This is it, the reason of all troubles of this character and other insane patients, and ours too – the lack of love.

(October 29, 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

The undubitable advantage of the film are actors. Aleksey Vertkov who played Ivan Dmitrovich, did his best. His pathos when he soliloquized about bright future which surely would come, just fit the bill same as such a malicious joy mixed up with sarcasm when he parried philosophical deductions of Ragin (namely this unfading one: "Your Diogenes was a blockhead!"). Well done!

(October 26, 2009) 

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/ 

Wonderful film. Chehov “a-la” 2008 – it is cool. Madhouse where people speak such a correct and intelligent Russian – this is all about us).

(October 25, 2009)

http://films.imhonet.ru/element/1091109/opinions/

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…The film is absolutely genius. Absolutely. Though it is heavy beyond expression. It starts with the interview with real patients and then it turns out that they all were abandoned by their parents in early childhood.

The film director Karen Shakhnazarov has achieved the impossible and fitted the actors into the real environment of a psychiatric facility.

http://capuchinka-451.livejournal.com/41973.html 

 (A viewer from Brazil)

I won’t go into details describing the problems the film raises. And my emotional experience. And the reaction of the Brazilian audience. But the way Moscow is shown – one shot says everything and a bit more. It is surprising, but unlike the book, the film came out not that heavy. On the whole, it is just a brilliant piece of art, from the very beginning when the breathless audience is watching the strict successive subtitles against the black background in a total silence without any audio feedback; and to the end when remarkable girls appear answering all the existential questions of the mankind.

I am inexplicably happy that Brazil and me in Brazil have seen your “Ward”!

http://leninhasa.livejournal.com/6514.html 

I want to make special mention of “Ward No. 6”. Now it is one of my favourite films (10 points from 10)

http://mylene-drive.livejournal.com/338376.html 

 I enjoyed it. A serious drama by one of our tough film makers Karen Shakhnazarov.

It has something in common with “The Assassin of the Tsar”; the young actor even looks like Malcolm McDowell.

http://garkusha.livejournal.com/136536.html

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Karen Shakhnazarov’s “Ward 6” is an intelligent, sophisticated, piercing statement. The best I have seen recently (of Russian movies). The actors’ work strikes as very accurate, there is nothing beyond the limit. Much of that is instinctive, but the producer’s instinct doesn’t let him down. I don’t have other words to describe him but Master!

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 Good films

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 In my view, Shakhnazarov’s new film is an explicit investigation into the historical destinies of dissent in Russia’s recent history. The bosses of perestroika and glasnost bent over backwards to expose to the man in the street the atrocities of the previous regime aimed at isolating society from the harmful impact of all sorts of dissenters and so-called “human rights defenders” who attempted to expose the state totalitarianism in the social and spiritual spheres.

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The film does not force you to watch people being killed, but offers you to watch one not very usual person through the eyes of his friends and acquaintances. I was personally touched by the fact that Ragin ends up at the mental hospital because his own philosophy broke him. I highly recommend seeing this movie, the more so that enthusiasts of auteur cinema will not have a chance of seeing anything of the kind any time soon.

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