A POST-MODERN/POST-SOVIET BET: “Raw Youth? He Was an Idiot!” Даун хаус/Down House (Drama-comedy-grotesque, Russia, 2001)(Dom Kino, 20:30) -- > A “free adaptation” of Dostovesky’s “The Idiot” – set in the late 1990s, with Prince Myshkin now a computer programmer returning to the Wild East of Moscow after psychotherapy in Switzerland – Roman Kachanov’s “Down House” is an insistently watchable experiment that ends up commendable as both a genuine homage and a big joke. Plus a great soundtrack! As one critic put it, this is “unquestionably the bravest rendition of the Dostoevsky novel,” and one that “wouldn’t make [FMD], himself a man of extremes, turn over in his grave if he saw it.” The basic Idiotic plot outline is maintained – but its boundaries are stretched as needed throughout, with the transition to post-Soviet modernity’s manners and mores, from gangsters to techno-bop, neatly accomplished through both telling dialogue and showing the Hummers. Further, the lynchpin figure of Myshkin is wonderfully rendered in all his touching naïvete by Fyodor Bondarchuk (in what may well prove a career best role). And finally, the two key “action” roles – Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna – likewise get standout performances (from Ivan Okhlobystin and Anna Buklovskaya) that seamlessly weave Serious Acting with seriously funny tongue-in-cheek. All that plus the inimitable Aleksandr Bashirov adding his traditional gravitas (plus a fart joke) as Ferdyshchenko. Stop scratching your head and tune in this unique feature (or watch online below), which won a Special Jury Prize at Sochi and, p’haps less surprisingly, an award at the Gatchina Film Festival “For unprecedented treatment of F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel ‘The Idiot’”(“За беспрецедентное обращение с романом Ф. М. Достоевского «Идиот»”) – a category in which it is unlikely to be challenged, Im betting, for some little while.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 10:26:53 +0000
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