Mikhail Bulgakov’s HEART OF A DOG (Sobachye serdtse) was published in 1925. The novel was a satire focused on the communist revolution, symbolically represented by an experiment that renders a dog human(ish), and featuring an extra wrinkle provided by Bulgakov’s wealthy intellectual status, which gave the story, with its peasant protagonist, an unpleasant shade of aristocratic snobbery. Unsurprisingly, the novel was immediately banned, and took over sixty years to see publication in its native land.
This lavishly mounted two-part dramatization was made for Russian television in 1988 (a year after the ban on the novel was lifted). The pic has been credited with helping popularize the novel, with Eastern European citizens on the whole said to be most familiar with HEART OF A DOG in filmic, rather than textual, form. To Westerners, however (who’ve had the book available in English translation since 1968), the film remains little known. It’s been opined that to fully understand it one has to be Russian, and based on this westerner’s unenthusiastic reaction that may well be the truth.
The director was Vladimir Bortko, who’s known for scrupulously faithful televised adaptations of classics of Russian literature, most notably THE IDIOT/Idiot (2003) and THE MASTER AND MARGARITA/Master i Margarita (2005). This has on the whole resulted in extremely lengthy programs—9 hours in the case of THE IDIOT and 8 and a half in the case of MASTER AND MARGARITA. HEART OF A DOG’s 2 hour and 16 minute runtime might seem economical by comparison, but is actually quite exorbitant in relation to Bulgakov’s novella length text.
The place is Russia in the 1920s, where Sharik, an abused dog living on the streets of Moscow, has been scalded with boiling water. It would appear that all is over for poor Sharik until Filip Filipovich (Evgeniy Evstigneev), a kindly scientist, takes the dog to live in his luxury flat. There a rejuvenated Sharik observes Filip arguing with his colleagues about the unsettled political situation in Russia and getting into a scuffle with the House Management Committee, a coalition of fellow tenants who assert that Filip’s apartment is too big.
Things change when Filip acquires the corpse of a recently murdered miscreant (Vladimir Tolokonnikov, who also appeared in THE MASTER AND MARGARITA). The latter is made the subject of an experiment involving the transplantation of his pituitary gland into the head of Sharik—presented in a sequence that, as in the equivalent passage in the novel, is disturbingly graphic in its detail—which transforms him into a dog-man who loses much of his fur, walks on two legs and talks. This new Sharik, however, is a complete jerk, which has carried over from his initial human form. His canine nature is represented by the fact that Sharik can’t refrain from chasing cats, and gets a job as a Pest Control officer so he can round up and kill stray kitties. Things get so unpleasant that Philip’s colleagues begin talking seriously about killing Sharik–but then a new development, involving regressive evolution, takes care of many, if not all, of the problems.
One aspect in which this film departs from its source text is the complete lack of humor. Bulgakov’s novella was suffused with a sense of raucous comedy, whereas Vladimir Bortko provides a bleak and brooding screen treatment whose atmosphere is set by lumbering pacing and sepia toned, art film redolent photography.
Yet in terms of sheer scale the film is undeniably impressive. The early twentieth century period detail (interspaced with vintage documentary snippets) is top-notch, and in the title role Vladimir Tolokonnikov is authentically dog-like; for that matter Karay, the real-life police dog who plays Sharik in the opening and closing scenes, also makes a sizeable impression.
Vital Statistics
HEART OF A DOG (Sobachye serdtse)
Lenfilm
Director: Vladimir Bortko
Producer: Georgiy Mautkin
Screenplay: Nataliya Bortko
(Based on a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov)
Cinematography: Yuriy Shaygardanov
Editing: Leda Semyonova
Cast: Evgeniy Evstigneev, Vladimir Tolokonnikov, Boris Plotnikov, Roman Kartsev, Nina Ruslanova, Evgeniy Kuznetsov, Olga Melikhova, Aleksey Mironov, Anzhelika Nevolina, Natalya Fomenko, Ivan Ganzha, Valentina Kovel, Sergey Filippov, Roman Tkachuk, Natalya Lapina, Sergey Bekhterev, Aleksandr Belinsky, Igor Efimov