When Karen Shakhnazarov set out to make Ward No. 6 his aim was to create a faithful cinematic rendition of Anton Chekhov’s late 19th century short story, but at the same time fast forward it to modern times. In Chekhov’s tale a Dr.Ragin becomes increasingly fascinated by conversations with Gromov, a psychiatric patient. This relationship ultimately leads to Dr.Ragins’s incarceration as a psychiatric patient in the very same hospital he once headed.
Shakhnazarov sat down with LWLies recently to discuss the making of this harrowing and touching drama.
LWLies: What motivated you to make a modern day cinematic version of Chekhov’s short story Ward 6?
Shakhnazarov: Well, the idea actually cropped up 20 years ago. Originally the film was to be made in collaboration with Italian producers. Marcello Maestroianni was very eager to play the lead role. However, the Italian producers did not want to move the action into the present. They favoured a traditional costume drama. Even then I thought it would be better to modernise Ward 6 because I believe that Chekhov is as contemporary then as when he was living and I wanted to emphasise this. So 20 years after I conceived the idea I have returned to it and placed it within a contemporary context. There is a timeless and universal quality to Chekhov’s works.
LWLies: If you had to name some of the existential issues your film and its protagonist Dr.Ragin wrestle with what would they be?
Shakhnazarov: I would say that this is the drama of an individual who has lost his faith in God and only believes in the material world. I have come to understand that Chekhov is a deeply religious writer. This was initially a revelation to me.
LWLies: What do you perceive as the predicament of Dr. Ragin, the protagonist?
Shakhnazarov: I believe that it was not accidental that the last words he uttered in both Chekhov’s story and the film are: “Probably eternal life exists. Millions of people believe in it.” But Ragin is unable to recover his faith and that is his tragedy.
LWLies: From an audience’s perspective some of Ragin’s behaviour is quite horrifying. For example, we see his extreme indifference to the suffering of others but at the same time great pathos is evoked when he finds himself imprisoned in the hospital as a patient. How did you want this character to be interpreted?
Shakhnazarov: I see him as both a victim and an oppressor. He is cruel and indifferent and at the same time he himself is suffering throughout the film. I believe this paradox is the essence of the whole story. Dr. Ragin tries to justify his worldly, materialistic existence and indifference to the suffering of others by saying that we are all going to die anyway, spiritual immortality does not exist and so the actual circumstances of one’s life are meaningless.
LWLies: What pushed this character to lose his faith and spirituality?
Shakhnazarov: I cannot say for sure what makes people become so indifferent. This is one of the factors that make Ragin our contemporary. This is the very problem of modern life. People have become estranged from simple, clear comprehensible human feelings. It appears that material things prevail. They seem to be more valued than human emotion or what we refer to as the human soul. It is typical of contemporary society that people are more interested in what kind of coffin Michael Jackson was displayed in – whether it was gold or not – rather than the spiritual connotations of death.
LWLies: What about the relationship between Dr. Ragin and Gromov his patient, who is a spiritual man.
Shakhnazarov: The conflict between Ragin and Gromov is also fundamental to the film. Gromov has spiritual faith and this makes a marked impression on the doctor and upsets his material existence and explains why he eventually goes “mad”. He suddenly meets a person who believes, who has a spiritual faith, and this destabilises him. Moreover Ragin’s predicament is that he is an intelligent man seeking something more than the worldly life he has chosen for convenience’s sake. He is looking for something beyond this life and he suffers because he is aware of his situation.
LWLies: You have been quoted as saying that, “there is always an element of Ward 6 in this world”. What did you mean by that?
Shakhnazarov: Chekhov created an image of the world where in fact most people consider normal those things which are essentially abnormal. He focused in this particular story on a lunatic asylum ward as a context, but I believe this paradox penetrates most aspects of our everyday lives.
LWLies: The line between sanity and insanity appears to become very blurred in the film…
Shakhnazarov: This is why we chose to make the film in a real functioning psychiatric hospital. We wanted to show how arbitrary the line that is drawn by society between sanity and insanity is. People are labelled as abnormal, even insane if they think in a different or individual way. Obviously my first frame of reference is what I perceive here in Russia around me just as Chekhov spoke first of all about the Russian experience. But as a person who has had broad experience of life I believe that this reality is characteristic of any society.
LWLies: You also chose to use actual patients from the hospital as extras. Why?
Shakhnazarov: To further blur the line between normality and abnormality. Also this gave me unique opportunities. It is impossible to capture many experiences in the film with actors. Of course we asked the patients for their permission before we filmed any of them. I believe it is very important that the audience realises that these secondary characters in the film have an important meaning.
LWLies: What was the patients’ reaction to the film?
Shakhnazarov: They liked the film and I think they see a lot more in it than someone, like you or I, who has not has not experienced life in such an institution would perceive. At least those with whom I spoke to believe that the film in many ways reflects their lives very accurately.
LWLies: Even to the extent that some feel that they are condemned to live out their lives in this hospital?
Shakhnazarov: Yes, that is the destiny of some of these patients, at least certain ones I spoke to. This is a horrible world but there is no escape from it.
LWLies: Given the intended timeless and universal approach of your film, do the sense of stagnation and a lack of real change within it reflect something innate to the human condition?
Shakhnazarov: I think that different periods of human history vary in their character. There are those when there is a thrust forward; some new ideas appear which carry people forward with them. But this can’t be said of the age we are living in.
LWLies: From a political perspective, in the days of Stalin political dissidents were placed in psychiatric wards. Is your film making any allusion to this?
Shakhnazarov: Well if I had made that film 20 years ago, in the 80s, probably these allusions would have been very prominent. In contemporary Russian life, I don’t see much to allude to on this subject. But on the other hand we know that at all times throughout history and across the world often absolutely sane people end up in asylums. However it is only because they think differently from others.
LWLies: You have been a film director since 1983. Some say your work has evolved from being comedies earlier on in your career to darker satire more recently. How accurate a description is this? One critic described Ward No. 6 as a black comedy. Do you agree?
Shakhnazarov: Probably I just grew up and matured. I have a different view of life but that doesn’t mean that I have lost my sense of humour! I would say it is definitely more of a tragedy or a drama at least, as opposed to a black comedy, despite some amusing moments.
LWLies: In the film you actually changed the ending to Chekhov’s story. Dr. Ragin does not die but rather suffers a stroke – a kind of symbolic death perhaps. Why was this?
Well, in the first place we made some changes to the plot as a whole. So the movie’s basic storyline is that a documentary filming unit discovers a psychiatrist, Dr. Ragin, who somehow or other has ended up as a permanent inmate in the same hospital where he worked. The unit starts investigating in documentary form how this man came to suffer his fate. We wanted to create the impression in the film of a documentary investigation, even if it was based on fiction. Within the documentary section at the start of the film we inserted the start of a modern version of Chekhov’s story. Despite the version’s contemporary nature, we made sure we preserved all of Chekhov’s original text and dialogue, apart from at the film’s end. When the characters speak in the film they utter the writer’s exact original dialogue, except at the very beginning which is genuine documentary.
LWLies: But the final scene was an addition to Chekhov’s tale?
Shakhnazarov: Yes, the final scene with the New Year’s dance on the hospital ward is something we added to the story although such events do take place in today’s psychiatric hospitals. Women and men from different wards congregate to celebrate the New Year. This reality intrigued me. To some extent I found it to be positive. I think that this alternative ending provides more hope. When we were making the film one of the patients approached me. He told me that he had read the original Chekhov story and he praised it but he said: “Please change the end. Don’t let Ragin die. Leave us with some hope.” And I agreed he was right.
LWLies: There seems to be a deliberately amateurish, home movie feel to the documentary elements of the film. What lies behind this?
Shakhnazarov: It is an intentional technique to bring Chekhov’s story even closer to the modern age. Today everyone has a camera, everyone can make a home movie and everyone does so.
