Heart of a Dog, by Christie Gibbons, page 2

The first time Sharik is brought into the professor’s examination room, he goes nuts. They have brought a wild dog into a tame and clean environment.  He is afraid of the white, sterile surroundings. In his attempt to flee from the professor, and his lab-partner, Dr. Bormenthal, Sharik breaks some glass, bites Bormenthal’s leg, and trashes the place. When they finally seize him, Sharik narrates: “Brothers, murderers, why are you doing it to me?” Thus, establishing for the film viewers his connectedness to humans, as brothers in a family of created beings. (This is one way in which Bulgakov, and now Bortko, show the relations between all living things, and the absurdity of harming those creatures who are near to our own kind.)  Sharik soon drifts off into a dreamy world of anesthesia as Bormenthal holds a soaked rag over the dog’s nose and mouth. He accepts the fact that he will soon be entering paradise. 

Yet, Sharik’s first examination room experience does not culminate with the end of his life as a dog on earth, as he initially thought it would. The professor and Bormenthal had merely sedated him in order to fix the massive burn on his side. Sharik realizes this as he slowly comes to in the examination room. When he begins to become lucid again, he awakes to an odd conversation between an elderly man, who has recently had his sex drive rejuvenated by the professor. The elderly man calls the professor a wizard and a miracle worker, equating the professor’s status with that of the divinity of the Creator, God. (At other moments in the film, Philip Philipovich is referred to as magician,sorcerer, even godhead.) Absurdity is further shown in the elderly man’s black-cat-print underwear, which reek of perfume, and his talk of having recently had so many naked ladies. This bears much semblance to today’s explosion of the new miracle elixir, Viagra.

The trouble for the elderly man in this film is that even though his genitals and sexual drive have been rejuvenated, his pubic hair has not, and remains gray. Except for, now, it is green, as he has attempted to have it dyed. This is one, rather absurd, but nonetheless effective example of how out-of-hand transforming nature can become.

Another example of this nature-transforming is shown in the very next sequence of the film, in which a 51 year-old woman with a fur coat, and voluptuous feathered hat comes to visit the professor, in pursuit of some rejuvenation herself. The professor examines her and decides she needs to have a monkey’s ovaries transplanted into her. He thinks that should do the trick. She is stunned, but willing to go through with the procedure at any cost. It is rather absurd, but the professor carries on in all seriousness and kindness.

When Professor Preobrazhensky works with his patients, be they human or animal, he uses kindness, not terror, to coax them. He says: “Kindness. The only method possible in dealing with living creatures. By terror you cannot get anywhere with an animal, no matter what its stage of development. I’ve always asserted this, I assert it today, and I shall go on asserting it. They are wrong thinking that terror will help them. No--no, it won’t, whatever its color: white, red, or even brown! Terror completely paralyzes the nervous system.”

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