User Reviews

This may be the most faithful film adaptation--the closest to approximating it in totality--of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment." It certainly is the most adherent to the text of any motion-picture version I've seen since reading it--most of the 24 movies on my list tend to be loose reworkings or, at least, updatings that often transport the story to another place. As I've repeated in other reviews of films based on literature, however, fidelity to the details of a story aren't particularly important to me; moreover, such an approach is often counter-productive. Film is a different art form than the novel, and a visual refresher course on a story I've already imagined in reading is of limited value to me. Thus, I'm more intrigued by how a film might divert or expand from its source and my initial impressions of it. This one does something along those lines involving dreams and subjective perspective early on in the first part, but unfortunately strays from that afterwards--becoming more of a reflection of the totalitarianism in which it was made--where the police state haunting Raskolnikov's nightmares inevitably catch up with him.

Indeed, this Soviet "Crime and Punishment" begins with a nightmare from Raskolnikov of him being chased by police. This very episode will be elaborated upon later in another fever dream. There's also some voiceover narration, and the outstanding scene where Raskolnikov's reading of a letter from his mother turns into a dream sequence of him discussing the contents of the letter from the book with his mother in person while they climb the steps to the pawnbroker's flat--the very place he later murders two women. It's a fantastic scene, and the rest of the picture is all downhill from there, sadly. There's a couple more dreamscapes after it, including a scene where he hears voices from his head, but doesn't hear the voice of Nastasya who's physically beside him. This was a creative approach to transmute the omniscience of Dostoevsky's narration that was able to peer inside Raskolnikov's thoughts--something that most film versions fail to adequately adapt ("Raskolnikow" (1923) and "Pickpocket" (1959) are exceptions and, consequently among the best of the bunch). The timeline even seems to be played with when Raskolnikov's first-shown meeting with the pawnbroker is intercut between his meeting with the drunkard.

Unfortunately, after such a promising start, most of this long, three-hours-and-some-forty-minutes picture is estranged from such subjectivity. According to N.M. Lary (in the book "Dostoevsky and Soviet Film: Visions of Demonic Realism"), this best, opening part of the film was an afterthought and a result of recuts after the picture's dry chronological plotting proved to lack intensity. No kidding. Much of the final scenes don't even feature the protagonist, and the rest is merely comprised of conversation after conversation inside cramped spaces. More exploration of Saint Petersburg would've been welcome and in keeping with the wandering Raskolnikov from the book. I also would've loved to have seen the bizarre nightmare from an inclusion of the book's epilogue, but, to be fair, I haven't seen a film version yet to include the epilogue to any significant extent. A couple have included or alluded to the horse-abuse flashback, but like the epilogue premonition, I suppose that would reflect poorly upon society. It doesn't help, either, that this is gloomy picture photographed in dull, grainy black-and-white. Any dark humor from Dostoevsky is absent here. Plus, some of the acting tends to be overly histrionic when any big emotions are called for. This works for the unhinged protagonist and maybe for Sonya's consumptive step-mother, but otherwise comes off as ridiculous and undermines the supposed realism of the Soviet aesthetic. The first of this comes with the drunkard's arm-waving pronouncements and extends to the climactic hysteria from the female characters reacting to the men's dastardly deeds.

On the other hand, the pacing seems decent given the engorged runtime. The often squalid interiors seem faithful. Indeed, the film is so faithful that it even rains on the right night. The murders are foreshadowed well, and they are well staged and shot without actually showing the axe chop through anyone. There's also a nice ticking clock motif, beginning to the murderer's irritation in the pawnbroker's apartment and extending through the inspector's interrogations and the final confession.

Without more of the cinematic subjectivity, however, there's not enough here to distinguish it much from a filmed play and a simplistic abridgement of the novel that focuses on Raskolnikov's confession to the all-mighty state over his religious conversion. This is why I'm not going to bother searching for a couple of the longer TV movies or mini-series based on the book to see how they compare to this film in closeness to the source. I've sought them out before for other adaptation studies I've done, and I've mostly been disappointed by the boob tube--more so the more slavishly they attempt to render the written word verbatim with their cheap TV productions. It's not the story details that are of the utmost importance; it's how that story is told, and the recognition that cinema requires a different approach to the novel. This "Crime and Punishment" starts out acknowledging this, but soon falters into focusing on the story at the expense of how it's told. Moreover, as Lary wrote, "Dostoevsky may have defended a reactionary social order, but the need to transform life was something he never lost sight of. To make him into an advocate of a merely conventional morality is to risk turning him into a champion of repression and this danger Kulidzhanov does not sufficiently acknowledge."

There is no doubt that "Crime and Punishment" would have been one of the greatest novels of the century had not Dostoevsky leaned towards the more acceptable sense of morality related to the weak tenets of Chrisitanity. In doing so, he made Rasknolikov a caricature of himself, lethargic and yet redeemable by accepting Christ's pathetic suffering. It was more appropriate to adapt Nietzsche's figure of "the noble superman" but Dostoevsky, at the time of his writing, was a destroyed soul, drinking and plagued by debts, a gambling and morphine addiction and on top of that, he was a converted Christian, which is to say he resembled a "spineless worm".

There is a powerful beginning in which the bold character Rasknolikov conceptualizes the murder of an old aged hag who serves no purpose to society but beyond that, Dostoevsky tortures us with the conscience of an obstinate man who is shattered by an insignificant crime. In all effect, Dostoevsky became an apologist not only for bourgeois values and the Czar with his corrupt regime, but for Orthodox Christianity, which not only supported the exploitation of the Russian population but welcomed it. The end of the novel, which portrays a once proud, noble, and intellectually superior young man weeping before a prostitute and the image of the bible, brings about the demise of Dostoevsky's credibility.