Morphine

The winter of 1917, a remote provincial hospital in Russia. Polyakov, a young doctor fresh out of school, has patients he must operate on alone. A shot of morphine given after an allergic crisis brings relief; within months the addiction becomes a nearer threat than the news of the revolution. Aleksei Balabanov directed, from the stories Mikhail Bulgakov drew out of his own years as a young doctor. The screenplay is by Sergei Bodrov Jr. Bodrov starred in Balabanov's Brat films and was killed in the glacier disaster in North Ossetia in 2002 while shooting. Balabanov filmed his script six years later. The image refuses the warm tones usual in period work; snow, blood and yellowing interiors run together. The surgery scenes are not softened at all, and they became the most argued-over part of the film. The revolution stays in the background; the story is the collapse of one body. Who it is for: viewers who follow Russian auteur cinema and addiction narratives. Who it is not for: anyone unprepared for medical imagery and hopeless endings.