Fyodor Bondarchuk played a crazy experimental villain. Photo: Frame of the series.
Psychiatrist Dr. Meshchersky (Fedor Bondarchuk) is not well in his head, because he has Alzheimer’s, forgets and writes down everything, and is also the illegitimate son of a psychopath (Sergei Garmash), who killed his own family in the delusion that his family is the spawn of the devil and is subject to destruction for the benefit of humanity. Whether or not this is true in relation to the doctor will remain a mystery until the end of the series, and perhaps even after.
Through bribery and blackmail, the doctor brings together four criminals and their victims in the underground prison of a country house in order to conduct an experiment to alleviate mutual aggression. This is how he explains it to the test subjects, but it is inaccurate.
Nurlan (Dzhalalitdin Ibragimov) is not right in his head, because he raped a pioneer and served a full sentence for it under a bad article. Tatyana (Yulia Volkova) was that pioneer, and now she is sterile, volunteers fiercely and dreams of dissolving this and other rapists in acid.
Andrei (Konstantin Plotnikov) is not right in his head, because he became addicted to drugs with his beloved wife, lost her, cried and dreams of killing his foster brother (Petr Skvortsov), who got them hooked. The brother is not very good either, because this is how he repaid the new family for rescuing him from the orphanage and he does not regret it at all.
The judge (Dmitry Vorobyov) is not right in the head, because he is paralyzed after an accident, he has lost everything he stole in his previous life and he is motivated by the desire to know the culprit of the accident, Natasha (Liza Shakira). , a selfish and mentally healthy fool.
Only Katya (Alena Mikhailova), abandoned by Elisey (Sergei Goroshko), seems normal, but this is a misleading impression, because she is the daughter of the mayor, who died with a life sentence for the murder of his son, which was not committed by him, and the seduction of minors, in which he was not involved. But half of those sitting in the cellar participated in his planting.
Debutant screenwriters Melnikova and Kirichenko, who came up with all this, apparently believe that everything is fine in their heads, although this is not at all the case.
However, the series achieves the doctor’s stated goal of instilling sympathy for the mentally unstable: I feel sorry for the heroes, because everyone will suffer for a long time and in different ways, and not everyone will survive to the end, just not everyone at all. But the kalimba, a musical instrument that has a calming effect on psychopaths, will brighten his final days.
All this has little to do with Russian reality.
We do not have psychiatrists capable of equipping a private prison on the estate with extensive communication and surveillance systems. They are not paid that much, even if they participated in Chikatilo’s examination (by the way, when Chikatilo underwent a psychotest for sanity, FS Bondarchuk was 23 years old. Apparently, his hero is a genius of forensic medicine, since at that age he was involved in high-profile cases).
In our country, private investigation in criminal cases requires notification to the authorities involved in the official investigation. Otherwise, such activity is illegal and the anger of the police officer who was used is inappropriate.
We do not have provincial investigative journalism, because the regional press is not profitable, it depends on the balance sheets of the cities and looks the mayor in the mouth, instead of unearthing him.
It turns out that all this does not matter at all, because there is an extreme person, who is embarrassing and interesting, like the adventures of the greedy bio-waste in “House-2”. The intrigue is uncontrollable: in mystical psychothrillers you can do so many things that would break the devil’s leg.
Let’s say that the pregnancy of one of the heroines with her weak husband is disturbing to the very end: was Garmash telling the truth, was his family cursed, was he the ex-husband of the woman in labor and the likely father of the offspring? Bondarchuk’s illegitimate son? Then no Alzheimer’s or aspen will solve the problems of humanity and interrupt the continuity of evil.
It seems that the not entirely sane authors had a similar movement in mind, but decided not to complicate it.
And without that, you can’t throw a shovel at the psychopaths on screen.
“Kalimba”
18+
2018.
Dir. Nürbek Egen. Okko
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