WATCH: Idiot

Adapting any literary work into a screenplay is fraught with problems from the start. Translating written words into images can be tricky, especially the internalized motives of characters. Reshaping a 900-page novel into a 2-hour film means leaving out some scenes, characters, conversations and thoughts the novelist believed important to the overall telling of the story.

When the masterwork in question is Russian, there is the added complication that most of the viewing audience will be intimately familiar with the story, and will harbor dangerous thoughts at any screenwriter or director who dares to leave anything out. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Idiot is such a masterwork well beloved and known to Russian audiences. There have been dozens of stage and screen adaptations over the years, with the first film released in 1913.

In 2003, Russian television produced a 10-part series that is faithful almost to a fault, although this version, too, leaves things out. Two of Russia’s best young actors take the leads: the dark, smoldering Vladimir Mashov as Parfyon Rogozhin and Yevgeni Mironov as Prince Myshkin, the idiot of the title. Mironov, a talented stage actor, creates his character through the use of his body – tightly drawn up into himself, stiff, never blinking his eyes. When he walks he never swings his arms, and his feet are placed one in front of the other, giving him an unbalanced persona. When he finally relaxes (or lapses) into happiness, as when he hops up a set of stairs, you appreciate the incredible job Mironov has accomplished.

The young female leads are also good, with Lidiya Velezheva as Natassya Filipopovna, the object of both men’s unrealistic affections, and Olga Budina as Aglava Yepanchina, young and immature, and out of her league with the others. But it’s the veteran actress Inna Churikova as Lizaveta Prokof’yevna that holds the entire production together, from the first episode to the last scene of this stunningly beautiful production.

The English subtitles are something beyond the pale. They go by very quickly (have your hand on the pause button), occasionally run off the ends of the screen, and are often so badly translated that they are funny. When General Yepanchin has a heart attack, his young son Koyla screams, “Impact! Help! Help!” That makes a little sense, some of the other subtitles are just gibberish.