"The Three Rooms of Melancholia"

It is never pleasant to watch a film in a war torn set but, when children are the main actors, it is even worse. Written and directed by Pirjo Honkasalo, The three rooms of Melancholia is a beautiful and heavy-handed documentary which reveals how the Chechen War has psychologically affected children in Russia and in Chechnya.

The film is divided in three episodes or “rooms”. The first room (“Longing”), set in a military academy in Kronstadt, shows us the daily life of young cadets, most of them from broken or dysfunctional families, who have been training to take part, in the future, in the Russian army. Several boys, whose stories reflect the political turmoil in contemporary Russia, are also profiled while scenes of their military drills, classroom sessions, church ceremonies (the only place where they could see people who were not in the academy, including girls) and recess period are shown.

The second room (“Breathing”), filmed in Grozny, the capital of Chechnnya, examines the
destruction of that city caused by Russian bombardment. There is very little dialog, this part of the film is crude in black-and-white and, for almost half an hour, we are forced to see (and to digest) images of a ruined city where children are forced to sweep the streets and go down wells wearing gas masks instead of enjoy their childhood running and playing games as the Russian children were doing.

Finally, we are introduced to Hazhayat, a courageous woman who knocks from door to door looking for children in need. We can witness her meeting a family where three children were crying over their sick mother. The door of this room is locked when Hazhayat take the children with her promising them that they would return when their mother was cured.

The third room (“Remembering”) is the hardest one to watch. Filmed in Islamic Republic of Ingushetia, it focuses children in regufee camps or in a orphanage where we see a 19-year-old girl (whose name I can’t remember) traumatized by her rape at the age of 12 by Russian soldiers. We are also taken to a village where adults sacrifice a ram to Allah, during the ritual, children pray and tears stream down their faces, while they think about what they have lost.

"The threes rooms of melancholia" brings to us, in a poetic way, the horror of a war that stole from innocent children what they had of more priceless, their childhood, their dreams. The boys of the academy, the three children whose mother was sick, the girl from the orphanage, and all the other victims of this war were forced to grow up too fast, losing their hopes during this process, and it is crystal clear, in the end of the documentary, how the seeds of hatred are being instilled in these young minds that will probably fuel the conflict to next generation.

Project from

Marina Santos

Advanced 2

Teacher Fernanda M.

Centro Britânico

Perdizes Branch

São Paulo - Brazil