Let's pretend you don't know you're watching a Boris Khlebnikov picture. Ten minutes in, those wildly gesticulating figures, staring perplexedly into space halfway between hilarity and despair, will definitely start looking familiar. Khlebnikov's signature visual style, complemented by dialogue but not dependent on it, could well be considered a natural (and extremely Russian) evolution of Buster Keaton's early Hollywood antics. Khlebnikov's third feature and second solo effort (his directorial debut, Roads to Koktebel, was made with Alexei Popogrebsky) is a deliberately paced urban saga following a modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Sergey Dreiden stars as a deluded, histrionic old man pursuing his whimsical follies in a near-barren Moscow suburb with the help of a dim-witted country bumpkin turned footman (Eugene Syty). Fuelled by lack of sleep and what could only by described as a misguided sense of responsibility toward humanity – at least the Russian portion of it – the old man bumbles through the streets undertaking bizarre selfappointed tasks, which include adding fake genitalia to a series of marble sculptures, building a boat in a nearby pond, relieving a neighbour of her long hair, painting his coat fluorescent colours and changing the location of a public bench. While the two are busy tilting at windmills, the old man's bewildered daughter (played by Anna Mikhalkova, whose father is the great Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov) tries to pry them apart by introducing rationale into their make-believe universe. She provides some basic human understanding in between the men's bouts of fancy, but ultimately she does more harm than good. The film ends much like Cervantes' novel, only the one restored to sanity is a miserable Sancho Panza, whose temporary lapse of devotion has possibly cost his master his life.
Help Gone Mad handles its content with exemplary absurdity, battling reason with quixotic obstinacy right to the very end. And it's not often a movie can count insanity, however temporary, among its virtues rather than its flaws.
Dimitri Eipides
Boris Khlebnikov was born in Moscow and graduated with a degree in cinema studies from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). He made his feature directing debut with
Roads to Koktebel (03), which he co-directed with Alexei Popogrebsky. His other features are
Free Floating (06) and
Help Gone Mad (09).