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| Courtesy of Altered Innocence |
Nightly, teenage lad Misha (Sergey Giro) rolls out of bed in
boxers and sleepwalks out of his family apartment into the cold Moscow open air
without reason or recollection as he wakes up in strange places. A brooding, withdrawn boy alienated by his parents
who themselves can’t seem to figure out how to curtail their son’s disorder, Misha
is administered treatment under the supervision of accomplished hypnotherapist
Dr. Volkov (Maksim Sukhanov). Defiant as
ever, Misha claims to be unhypnotizable but nevertheless stays on board warming
up to Volkov as a prospective pupil eager to learn the ways of hypnotizing others. During his time in treatment mingling with
other patients he’s struck by a young girl named Polina (Polina Galkina) whom
he quickly forms a bond with. But when she
abruptly disappears and Misha tries to find her, his investigation leads him
down towards a path where the lines between reality and dream are
indecipherable.
Loosely based on the director’s own childhood experiences as
a 12-year-old sent to renowned Soviet hypnotist Vladimir Raikov to better cope
with claustrophobia and co-written with the help of Lubov Mulmenko, Hypnosis
while never fully breaking into the terrain of the psychological thriller
is nevertheless a confounding slowly burnt psychodrama that’s at once ethereal
and somewhat melancholy. Utilizing the
snow-covered chilly Moscow as a backdrop for Misha’s existential loneliness
inside a carefully managed system, the film somehow or another transforms Russia’s
grandest city into the increasingly paranoid and delusional headspace of the
protagonist. Over the course of the
movie we’re deliberately as confused and afraid as the film’s troubled hero
trying to figure out what’s happening to him.
As
aforementioned, this is a lush panoramic 2.35:1 widescreen effort lensed
beautifully and occasionally asymmetrically by Jean-Noël Mustonen, capturing
the interiors of the apartment complexes within Moscow in subtle shades of
grey, green and orange especially during nighttime scenes. At times the exterior framing of balconies
and stairwells are shot in such a way that we feel ourselves being threatened
and turning inward with Misha. One
particular scene that catches the eye involves Misha dangling off the edge of a
balcony as the doctor tries to talk him down from jumping, shot in such a way
that the chances of falling feel overwhelming visually.
Equally
striking is the subtle electronic score by Barbarian composer Anna
Drubich who has already established herself as one of the premier horror film
soundtrack writers and then some.
Performance-wise the cast is fine with first-time actor Sergey Giro
imbuing the boy with a Fyodor Dunayevsky youthful disobedience. The film really catches fire however when it
posits Sergey against accomplished and formidable actor Maksim Sukhanov of The
Horde. Intimidating and oversized
but possessing a clinical complete control over his patients (and soon us),
Sukhanov makes the hypnotist a figure to look up to in wonderment and later
some measure of fear when it appears not all is what it seems.
More
interesting and fascinating than piercing or searing, the quietly unsettling
and haunted Hypnosis is at once a personal confession from the director
as well as a genre-hybrid of the coming-of-age film and the psychological
thriller deep in the heart of a Moscow winter.
Beautifully composed and performed by the ensemble cast, it is a film
that asks us to look further inward whose mysterious aura won’t wow all viewers
but will indeed leave behind much food for thought. Todorovskiy is a director to watch for with a
unique personal vision of his country of origin while the film boasts icy yet
ornate vistas of his home while zeroing in on aspects of his own life rarely if
ever dealt with in Russian cinema.
--Andrew Kotwicki
