The plot revolves around religious interpretation validity, but just out the shell.However, religion issues are a mere devise to show the detrimental progress of the mind of a boy traumatized for the absence of a father. That father longing, becomes the Father, and the Son religious metaphor that is at the same time took literally by the main character. The boy that is treated as a devote religious man, is never taken seriously as the boy that needs urgently a shrink to disclose the only reason for being ill minded. The pain of Growing without a father and the mother as the remaining culprit, no matter how she cares. The Bible as a textbook. And the Bible as the metaphor of the lacking lessons that a father could had given to his son. Divorce is the apple eaten by the new Adams and Eves of the 21th century.

This is the main idea of this film, which is a parable and a satire at the same time. The main character is a text-book case of a psychotic person, with all relevant schizophrenia symptoms (visual hallucinations, illusion of grandeur, paranoid ideas). Many of the scenes actually describe psychotic crises (getting undressed, wearing the ape costume, carrying the cross, abusing his friend, killing him etc.). So this is actually simple to understand. But the movie goes beyond that. The parable aspect of the film is that no one (neither the biology teacher) understands the madness of this character, and treat him like a normal person (or at least in acceptable terms). They all come into argument with him, support or contradict his delirious ideas, and finally tolerate his fundamentalist way of thinking (which is the product of mental disease). Of course the situation is not realistic; in the normal world, the person would be immediately taken to a hospital. But the point that the director is trying to make is that fundamentalist ideas are a delirium that is contagious, that other people tend to lose their critical thinking, that science can not withstand the attack of religious ideas and that normal people can actually become victims when the liberal values are dismissed. A beautiful, heart-breaking movie about how society's values can be lost, along with sanity, love and respect to each other.

There are two kinds of movies. Those where the director tells a story and all you need to do just sit and watch. Batman. La La Land. And so on. And there are adult movies where the audience is expected to do some work filling in the gaps. But even here, there has to be same places clearly indicated for the audience to color in, so to speak. This film is a long overblown self regarding pile of nonsense. Nothing is explained. Nowhere do we learn why the protagonist is a religious nut case, nor why the school he attends and disrupts daily with his gospel quoting madness is allowed to do so unpunished. He comes dressed as an ape when the lesson is about Darwin, whose theory of evolution offends his biblical beliefs. He then takes all his clothes off as a protest in a lesson where a carrot used as an erect penis covered with a condom to illustrate safe sex. Again, there is not a word of admonition. I simply do not believe any Russian school would tolerate such behavior - and I know a fair bit about Russian life. He would be sent to a nut hutch as fast as you can say Putin is Boss. The director, a bearded man with glasses, and he has an agenda. This is that the church is creeping back and will again rot the thinking of the forward looking masses. Well, that is what I got from coloring this miserable movie without a single line to guide me. There is a touching performance from Tiny Tim - not really. A sad lonely potentially gay lad with a short left leg who gets killed by the nutter. Laughable.

Nowadays Russian cinema is more political than ever. And its political word is not shy, it frankly declares war against either bureaucratic or societal corruption (or both), as we can see in Leviathan, Durak, and this film. But the most dangerous enemy in this war, is the scope of the enemy. If you define the whole corrupt society as something to destroy, who will be your allies in this war? No one, for sure. You're as lonely as Don Quixote in his delusions.Actually, the idea of "the Holy Bible in a human's body" as a character is striking, strengthened by the undeniable references. The viewers are forced to observe how religious fundamentalism can threaten the society, especially when the people around cannot see the big picture, cannot imagine what will come next and feed the beast naively as if donating to the church. But as I mentioned above, despite the power of its criticism this movie too is unfortunately flawed with the problem of being incapable of providing solution, like similar others. The film rightfully asks: "This religious fundamentalism is poisoning us! What is the antidote to it?" But the answer is perfectly oxymoronical: "We need idealist individuals, but hopeless at the same time due to their loneliness..."So, according to me it's clear that these "pessimist-idealist" characters represent the directors themselves. They can foresee what's coming, they want to do something, but when they look around they realize that they don't have anyone to cooperate with. So, disappointed with this loneliness, they get critical of the society much more than the problems the society is experiencing. So, contradictorily, what we as the viewers have in the end is not a motivation for action, but a reflection of the pessimism of the director dictating us to sit and smile cynically at the inevitable self-destruction of the society.