Cult Cinema: Heart of a Dog (1988) - Reviewed

Courtesy of Lenfilm

World famous Russian novelist/playwright/doctor Mikhail Bulgakov was one of the all-time great writers, best known for his novel The Master and Margarita which has since been canonized as one of the 20^th century literary masterpieces.  Largely critical of the Russian Civil War and the fates of Russian scholars in his texts, many of his works were initially banned by the Soviet Union before eventually achieving cult status many years later.  Often satirical and comically farcical, his works not only directly influenced pop culture around the globe including but not limited to The Rolling Stones and Pearl Jam, but also spawned more than a dozen film and television adaptations of his works throughout the world.
 
While The Master and Margarita went on to spawn four disparate adaptations for cinemas and small screens over the course of twenty years, one which still remains under the radar of western moviegoers is Heart of a Dog which might be the funniest science-fiction satire of its kind since Dr. Strangelove.  Originally written in 1925 as a blistering critique of Bolshevism, the book told the story of a Moscow based surgeon who performs an experimental brain operation on a stray dog, eventually transforming it into a human being.  As he transitions, he becomes a Frankenstein monster of sorts wreaking havoc, being boorish and disorderly and causing all manner of chaos within the household of the now hapless professor fraught with regret over his medical creation.
 
After the book’s banning, Bulgakov readapted the work into a stage play which opened to enormous success in 1926 before being cancelled and copies of the play were confiscated by the authorities though the book took on a second life via samizdat or bootleg copies passed by hand before being published officially in the US in 1968.  Though still unpublished in Russia, the first official big screen adaptation of Heart of a Dog came in 1976 from an Italian-German co-production called Dog’s Heart with none other than Max Von Sydow in the role of Professor Philipp Philippovich Preobrazenski.  While retaining the comical elements of the text and play, like The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea which was released in the same year the relocation of the story’s setting may have confused the novel’s initial intentions.

 
Some sixty years after being written, Heart of a Dog finally saw publication in 1987 in the Soviet Union despite being an underground hit in the hearts and minds of domestic readers.  Naturally just a year later, Russia reclaimed ownership of its now beloved world-renowned novelist’s most incendiary work in the form of a black-and-white Soviet television film directed by Vladimir Bortko and adapted by Natalya Bortko, Heart of a Dog.  

Starring Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev as the Professor and Vladimir Tolokonnikov as the dog-man Sharik-Sharikov, the Lenfilm production split into two episodes (common for Russian theatrical films also) is a period piece set in 1924 Moscow shortly after the October Revolution that starts off as a sobering dystopian science-fiction tale of experimental surgery on the stray dog before climbing the walls and chandeliers with the newly reformed dog-man into a comedy that flirts with screwball slapstick.  Beginning as soft drama before evolving into a near-goofball jaunt, this is the kind of film Ken Russell would’ve absolutely been proud of, a film that starts off sneakily slow before slipping on a banana peel.
 
The first half of the film largely belongs with the distinguished Professor Preobrazhensky with the bearded elderly Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev pontificating about the needs for his experimental surgical techniques while the film’s titular stray dog Sharik speaks in voiceover to the audience about his new master in slow, hushed tones.  This early portion with the stray dog will no doubt remind some viewers of the sluggish, drugged interior monologues thought by the poor victim leading Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, making you feel the suffocating trappings of his existence.  However, that all changes rapidly post-surgical procedure involving implanting the testicles and pituitary gland of a human into the dog Sharik and within days Vladimir Tolokonnikov’s dog-man Sharokov hijacks the movie.

 
From here, it becomes a comedy of torments as Sharikov picks up bad table manners, aggression, foul-mouthed banter, drinking, smoking and inappropriate behavior with respect to the opposite sex.  Meanwhile the Professor, once living in a carefully constructed place of privilege now finds his world turned upside down by this wild animal of his creating tearing his home apart.  To try and become an upstanding member of society, Sharikov takes on a job tracking down and killing stray cats.  Worse still, as the Professor tries to clamp down on Sharikov’s troublemaking, Sharikov tries to rat him out to the Soviet police, soon transforming the Professor and his subject into sworn mortal enemies.
 
Winner of the Prix Italia and the Vasilyev Brothers State Prize of the RSFSR in 1990, Heart of a Dog is perhaps the most savagely funny Russian science-fiction comedy satire ever made, a film that dares you to laugh at the attempts to control aberrant behavior resulting in the further proliferation of said behaviors.  Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in theory, the story presents a tale of a creator rejecting his creation but with Heart of a Dog rather than formulating what should be an outright horror story tinged with science fiction fantasy, the book and film lampoon the doctor’s plight and the wrath inflicted by his monster. 

 
Somewhat of a companion piece to the far more savage/revolting/hilarious Khrustalyov, My Car! which followed ten years later, Heart of a Dog is sociopolitical satire as absurdist science-fiction comedy that starts off slow before firing on all four cylinders.  Despite the film’s sepia-tone black-and-white photography by Yuri Shajgardanov and occasionally mournful score by Vladimir Dashkevich, Heart of a Dog is kind of like watching a distinguished college graduation ceremony with the head of the board giving an eloquent speech before some kid sneaks behind him and pulls his pants down in front of everyone, inviting everyone to laugh at the poor guy’s expense.  You feel a bit bad for the mayhem Professor Probrazenski inadvertently unleashed upon himself and the world even though you just can’t stop laughing about it. 

--Andrew Kotwicki