Description:

A family goes mad with grief over the imagined death of little Kikos, who hasn't actually been born yet. Based on Hovhannes Tumanyan's short story "The Death of Kikos" (Կիկոսի մահը, 1913).

Two versions of the film were made at about the same time - an Armenian one and a Russian one. They are visually the same, but the script is not exactly the same (slightly different details are given, and the Armenian one is a little more "poetic"). The first video above is the Armenian version, and the second is the Russian version - each has its own subtitle file.

The film ingeniously ridicules the Armenian habit of predicting in advance all the possible turns of fate. It became one of the outstanding works of Armenian cinema and was included on a 2021 postage stamp.

This absurd story falls within an interpretation called the "Clever-Elsie syndrome" or also the "polycrates complex" - a psychoanalytical term outlined by John Carl Flügel in 1945 denoting the compulsion to see good fortune "paid for", rooted in the "need for punishment" of the guilt-ridden. Other potentially related folk tales are: "The Milkmaid and Her Pail", the English "The Three Sillies", and the Russian "Lutonyushka". They all reflect paranoid schizophrenia, in which, Elsie or Kikos is shown an example of personality destruction through improper upbringing, or more specifically as histrionic personality disorder.

This syndrome in psychiatry refers to a person's state of obsessive anxiety about their future, which is seen in gloomy tones. It often manifests itself among young mothers, who constantly feel that their children are in danger from all sides. In extreme manifestations, the syndrome can result in obsessive neurosis to completely control the life of a grown-up child and keep him close to you at any cost. Besides, the syndrome also aggravates the condition of children predisposed to obsessive-compulsive disorders. Excessive indulgence of the fears and desires of a child by people close to him negatively affects his psyche.