In turns, fun, strange and sad, 'House of Fools', a movie about an Insane Aslum in the middle of a Chechen war, asks the following question: Who is crazier, the soldiers or the patients? The true insight is the other patients missing from the asylum, the critics that gave it a bad review.

Surrealism in the face of horror. Shades of Catch-22.

Tears down convention while simultaneously indulging clichés and ultimately pushing the line so far as to blur it completely.

Good film. Yes, probably, the world at times is more mad than the mad house... but having said that, I have never found the mad house a mad place... that's just me perhaps...

The first 3/4 of the movie is great. The performances are stellar and the story is engaging, it's funny and tragic at the same time. Unfortunately, towards the end the movie feels rushed and heavy handed.

Kinda true, in a fictional narrative sense. A woman's obsession with Bryan Adams while maintaining enough intellect to run the asylum without official leaders being assistance for the patients. It's a film that is enjoyable and very quirky. It is overall decent.

A rather peculiar and difficult movie, esp. the fact of Bryan Adam's starring it.

Was on duty when this was on so spent the first 30 minutes dealing with latecomers and then missed the ending due to a shift change. I found it difficult to connect with this film.

House Of Fools lacks any kind of connection towards the characters and the story is as blurred as many of the handheld camera shots. Veteran Andrei Konchalovsky's film depicts a very dated view of mental illness. This film is very taxing to watch and even though there are a few glimpses of emotion found within the mess they barely ripple the emotional surface. Bryan Adams deity like character seemed to be included to irritate the audience. How this film was produced, let alone won the Grand Special Jury Prize at Cannes is anyones guess.

The film is pretty clear about its message that wars and the people who fight them can seem just as crazy as the mentally ill. Using that much Bryan Adams in a film is also pretty wacky, incidentally. The motif is largely conveyed through parallelism in the characters, particularly when it comes down to the details of the acting. The cinematography mostly serves to complement this approach and does its part. The most striking aspect of it was the occasional sudden changes to a hand-held "documentary-like' camera, which seemed to signify moments that became "too real" even for our ill protagonist.

o kadar guzel ilerliyorduki az daha 5 yildiz verecektim...ama sonunda sacmaladi bi an...

Thought this movie was sad, but cute too. It was okay, I didn't expect this movie to be like a really good movie but the directing and casting was good enough! Interesting story I guess. There's Janna and Eli?? Forgot his name but they both are at least smarter than the other patients, while the doctor and the nurses escaped, they were being the responsible by taking care of them. Just showing this movie what they went through and how they survived.

I watched it 2 years ago. I think this is magic

Some interesting moments and performances, but too much Bryan Adams and "madness of war", not enough helicopters falling out of the sky.

The beginning was so weird and creepy in some points, but after the first 20 minutes it starts to become so much more interesting. Yuliya Vysotskaya's character was the key for such an interesting story. This cute patient in the mental clinic prefers to live her fantasies about Bryan Adams than face the reality of war and the people close to her be dying.

I don't understand the naysayers reviewing this film. It is quite the interesting slice of life and who would expect...Bryan Adams playing a cameo in a Russian film?

Contrasting the sane/insane to raise the question of who really is "sane"? Luckily this movie doesn't finish on either note but keeps it's distance from any conclusion therein. Beautifully shot movie following the gang of lovable crazies bickering and bumbling in a VERY casual depiction of their world inside the asylum. When war rages past and soldiers take cover inside, the obvious contrasts begin, but with a more human side to the soldiers than any flat war movie I've seen in ages. The pretty young blond Janna lives in her naively beautiful world where everyone has love and life, and whenever it isn't going well she whips out her accordion and light shines and everyone smiles and dances. She dreams of her love, Canadian star Bryan Adams, and is waiting for his advent. She soon gets swept up by a dimwitted and jesting soldier who proposed to her as a joke. There is a harshly awkward dinner scene where the two worlds are brought together, but then separated as the soldiers move on. Janna seems to lose herself after this and falls into a heavy woe as around her helicopters explode, lives are mysteriously taken, and old men compare apples and earth to explain their anorexia. While based on a true situation, this movie is a complete fantasy. It can't be taken that seriously; the beginning dream of Bryan Adams should be warning enough. It's a movie you should take at face value and enjoy the sensation afterward, not break it apart.

Chechnya exploitation. As usual with Konchalovsky, a strong statement without much analysis and poorly played out.

Janna, a Russian psychiatric patient is in love with a Chechen soldier but she thinks that Bryan Adams is her long term boyfriend... You just fall in love with the other patients in the mental hospital....

Sujet a une forte controverse en Russie - La bas, on ne rigole pas avec ces choses la! - House of fools offre un point de vue etonnant sur le conflit en Tchetchenie. Le prisme envisage par le realisateur est celui d'un hopital psychiatrique situe sur la ligne de front, dont les pensionnaires se retrouvent livres a eux-memes au milieu d'un conflit auquel ils ne comprennent rien. Au fil des rencontres improbables entre les pensionnaires, les miliciens tchetchenes et les soldats russes, la realite s'efface au profit d'une poetique forme de folie douce : Russes et Tchetchenes se decouvrent des souvenirs communs et trafiquent drogue et munitions ; certains malades versent dans un patriotisme delirant, d'autres vivent une histoire d'amour fantasmee...avant que la sauvagerie de la guerre ne rappelle tout ce petit monde a l'ordre. L'absurdite de la guerre trouve echo dans la folie des malades et les roles s'inversent sans fracas au gre des circonstances. Au son de l'accordeon et des balades de Bryan Adams (auquel une des protagonistes est persuade d'etre fiancee), House of fools tangue de facon erratique entre violence realiste et onirisme, jusqu'a parfois negliger brievement la necessaire correlation entre les deux. On se retrouve alors un peu egare dans un scenario qui semble avoir perdu toute coherence. Mais les personnages sont attachants, et cette atmosphere typiquement slave ou le burlesque le dispute au dramatique presente decidement beaucoup de charme. Si House of Fools n'est pas particulierement passionnant a suivre si on ne se trouve pas dans le bon etat d'esprit, son originalite laisse neanmoins une impression durable dans l'esprit du specteur...meme si je reste persuade qu'un realisateur moins maladroit serait sans doute parvenu a esquiver les multiples ecueuils lies a ce style difficile et a tutoyer le chef d'oeuvre.