Alexei Balabanov

Just What the Doctor Disordered

MOVIE REVIEW
Morphia (2008)

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The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival

"Morphia" is the most nihilistic moviegoing experience possible, which is meant as a supreme compliment. It's based on the autobiographical stories of Mikhail Bulgakov, whose most famous work, "The Master and Margarita," is about the devil coming to 1920s Moscow. In this film though the young Dr. Polyakov (Leonid Bichevin) is in a remote rural hospital in 1917, and the devil is morphine.

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