{"id":1584,"date":"2009-02-13T16:26:14","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T15:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/blog\/?p=1584"},"modified":"2015-03-27T14:53:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-27T14:53:00","slug":"berlin-help-gone-mad-is-slow-perplexing-and-very-russian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=1584","title":{"rendered":"BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Boris Khlebnikov&#8217;s &#8216;Help Gone Mad&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/help-gone-mad-x650.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6220\" src=\"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/help-gone-mad-x650.jpg\" alt=\"help gone mad x650\" width=\"650\" height=\"414\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/help-gone-mad-x650.jpg 650w, https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/help-gone-mad-x650-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/a>By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n<p>BERLIN \u2013 Russian director Boris Khlebnikov&#8217;s enigmatic urban saga &#8220;Help Gone Mad&#8221; is very Russian indeed with long slow scenes and the driest comedy involving two lost men who take on some resemblance to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.<\/p>\n<p>Unlikely to attract audiences beyond Russian borders, the film offers a clash of moods from whimsy to the terror of a police force without control. Uninteresting visually, what enjoyment there is comes from the performances of the two leads.<\/p>\n<p>Evgeny Syty plays a slow-witted country bumpkin who travels into Moscow for a day&#8217;s work after which he is promptly mugged and left without money, ID or shoes. A deluded old man (Sergey Dreiden) takes him home, feeds him a broth of boiled bones and insists that he stay.<\/p>\n<p>The old man embroils him in his daily missions to save Moscow&#8217;s rundown citizens from the horrors of urban decay and together they tilt, if not at windmills, then at birdhouses, trash bins and park benches.<\/p>\n<p>The old guy&#8217;s daughter (Anna Mikhalkova) brings his medicine and supplies of food but he resists her attempts to take care of him while she treats his visitor with disdain. The cockeyed threesome&#8217;s fate is bound to intersect with a lazy but brutal local police captain but the film takes what must be a very Russian view of the consequences.<\/p>\n<p>Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Forum; Cast: Evgeny Syty, Sergey Dreiden, Anna Mikhalkova, Alexander Yatsenko; Director: Boris Khlebnikov; Screenwriter: Alexander Rodionov; Director of photography: Shandor Berkeshi; Editor: Ivan Lebedev;\u00a0 Producer: Roman Borisevich; Production: Koktobel; Not rated; running time, 118 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ray Bennett BERLIN \u2013 Russian director Boris Khlebnikov&#8217;s enigmatic urban saga &#8220;Help Gone Mad&#8221; is very Russian indeed with long slow scenes and the driest comedy involving two lost men who take on some resemblance to Don Quixote and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=1584\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2352,5,14],"tags":[99,379,402,569,1076],"class_list":["post-1584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-berlin-international-film-festival","category-film","category-reviews","tag-help-gone-mad","tag-berlin-international-film-festival","tag-boris-khlebnikov","tag-evgeny-syty","tag-sergey-dreiden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6222,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions\/6222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}