Fantastic Fest 2009

Loosely based on the memoirs of the celebrated Russian novelist and one-time physician Mikhail Bulgakov, MORPHINE is a meticulously structured exploration of a young country doctor’s descent into addiction on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution. Shot on location in the pastoral landscapes of the Tvar Oblast region north of Moscow, the cinematography and production design of director Aleksey Balabanov’s latest film are as alluring as the story is bleak.

Despite his youth and inexperience, Dr. Mikhail Polyakov’s (Leonid Bichevin) arrival in the village of N. in the fall of 1917 is heralded with relief by the townspeople, who have suffered through a difficult year without a physician. Inheriting a skeleton staff of two nurses and a paramedic from his mysterious, absent predecessor, Polyakov is quickly confronted with a litany of patients experiencing serious ailments. The one apparent blessing he discovers in his tour of the facilities – a well-stocked pharmacy – soon proves to be quite the opposite. Within hours of his arrival, Polyakov’s admirable efforts to save a man dying of diphtheria leave the doctor himself in need of a vaccination and a fateful shot of morphine. Over the course of the winter, stress, isolation and perhaps even boredom lead him into a tangle of vice that includes regular drug abuse, dalliances with patients and a doomed affair with the attractive nurse Anna (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) who later shares his addiction. His escalating acts of medical malfeasance and growing inability to conceal his habit finally lead Polyakov to seek treatment in Moscow, where he is forced to contend simultaneously with the reality of impending national revolution and the extent of his own degeneration.

A morbid spectacle of human frailties both physical and psychological, MORPHINE’s narrative unfolds with an almost clinical detachment against a backdrop of quietly stunning visuals. Gruesome scenes featuring amputation, child-birth and tracheotomies (procedures which Balabanov claims were actually performed on real patients using a licensed physician) stand in stark contrast to bucolic images of the snow-blanketed Russian countryside and richly furnished parlours lined with gleaming samovars and vodka decanters. Although Balabanov himself insists that his latest outing stands apart from his other works, devotees may enjoy hints of the nostalgic eroticism seen in 1998’s OF FREAKS AND MEN and resonance with the political themes of last year’s Fantastic Fest fave CARGO 200. (Carrie Matherly)