Petr Zelenka's latest film, Bracia Karamazow / The Karamazovs, is surely one of the most original projects in recent times made with the involvement of the Polish film industry. The Czech director, maker of such famous and award-winning films as Buttoners, Year of the Devil, and Wrong Side Up as well as scriptwriter for the unforgettable Loners, set The Karamazovs in Poland. The main characters are a group of Czech actors bringing their production, an adaptation of the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, to a festival taking place in Kraków, at the Sendzimir Steel Mill. Once a flagship project of communism, its location in Nowa Huta near Kraków having been designed as a blow to Kraków's intelligentsia, the mill now belongs to an international metallurgical corporation. Holding an arts festival there is an interesting experiment, an artistic project in itself, while also taking advantage of the popularity of the techno trend in contemporary mass culture. Anyway, the Czech troupe begin rehearsing their show in a factory hall, next to the working steel melting shop and rolling mill. The fast-paced and expressively delivered story from Dostoyevsky's work, focusing on patricide and touching on age-old human dilemmas - the existence of God and free will, love, hate, and jealousy, is superimposed on ordinary events: one of the actors needs to get back to Prague for a film shoot, another is learning his lines for another show, while the director tries to keep the group focused. The performance is unexpectedly influenced by one of the steel mill workers, whose son had an accident the previous day and is waiting in hospital for surgery. The man refuses to move away from the stage where the performance is being held. For him, art is a kind of catharsis, a key to understanding the world - suddenly empty after the death of a child, a world in which there will be no place for him either.
Asked what had drawn him to a project based on Dostoyevsky, Petr Zelenka told a journalist from the monthly "Kino" (issue 10/2008):
"The idea for the film was born after the premiere of 'The Brothers Karamazov' at the Prague theatre I work for. I wanted to document that production. The film revolves around the responsibility of intellectuals for their views. It is set during a rehearsal of the show, with another story unfolding between run-throughs of successive scenes - one which focuses on the question of people's guilt and punishment in connection with their deeds."
He was also asked about his theatrical interests, as he is a respected playwright as well:
"Writing a play, I can give free rein to my love of dialogue. On the stage, everything is based mainly on dialogue, while a film shouldn't contain too much of it. That's why theatre is what fascinates me the most at present."
That doesn't change the fact that despite its theatrical origins, Zelenka's production is an extremely cinematic work. Perhaps this is because the adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel was written by the great Czech film director Evald Schorm, maker of Pearls on the Ground and Five Girls around the Neck, among other films, whom the communist government stripped of the right to make films after the suppression of the Prague Spring. According to Jerzy Płażewski, who reviewed The Karamazovs after the Karlovy Vary festival ("Kino", issue 9/2008), where the film won recognition from the jury and the FIPRESCI critics, Zelenka's work has five layers: the first is 19th-century Russian reality, captured in Dostoyevsky's story (layer two), adapted by Schorm for theatre (layer three), and brought to the screen by Zelenka (layer four), and finally there's everything - layer five - that takes place in connection with the performance in Nowa Huta.
"It's rare for a single cinematic work", Płażewski writes, "to provide so much material for comparisons between literature, theatre, and cinema. Grinning, masochistic tsarist Russia is intentionally exaggerated in its theatre version. Calculated to reach the eighteenth row of seats, the extreme reactions of Dmitri, the eldest of the brothers, is radically different from the rules of expressiveness in a film. However, this is precisely the way chosen by experimental theatre to shout out hatred, fear of the world's dehumanisation, of the departure from the moral canons of Christianity towards a cheap rationalism. Dostoyevsky expressed this in his description of Dmitri's face, which had a diseased look, his eyes 'had an expression of firm determination, and yet there was a vague look in them, too'. That 'diseased' look will be played differently by a theatre actor than a film actor. But because the third layer, theatre, is a documentation, Zelenka logically preserves the theatrical interpretation."
The fast-paced, expressive film The Karamazovs, saturated with multiple meanings, caused an animated discussion at the Polish Film Festival and won the FICC (film club) award. The Czechs submitted the film as their official entry for an Academy Award for best foreign language film.
- Bracia Karamazow / Karamazovi / The Karamazovs, Czech Republic-Poland 2008. Director: Petr Zelenka, screenplay: Petr Zelenka based on Evald Schorm's theatre adaptation of the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, director of the theatre performance: Lukáš Hlavica, cinematography: Alexander Surkala, music: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, set design: Barbara Ostapowicz, costumes: Martin Chocholoušek, editing: Vladimír Barák, sound: Michal Holubec. Cast: Lena Krobotova (Grushenka), Michaela Badinkova (Katerina), Ivan Trojan (Old Karamazov/Devil), David Novotny (Dmitri), Igor Chmela (Ivan), Martin Mišićka (Alyosha), Radek Holub (Smerdyakov), Marek Matějka (Judge/Pole), Roman Luknar (Director), Adrianna Miara (Kasia), Andrzej Mastalerz (Hall Manager). Producers: Prvni Verejnopravni, Ceska Televizie (Czech Republic) - Warsaw Pact Film Production (Poland). Co-financed by: Polish Film Institute, Eurimages, Statni Fond CR pro podporu a rozvoj česke kinematografie. Length 100 min. Released on 6 February 2009.
Author: Konrad J. Zarębski, December 2008.
Awards:
- 2008 - Special Mention and FIPRESCI Prize for Petr Zelenka at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; Don Quixote award from the Polish Federation of Film Discussion Clubs (PF DKF) for Petr Zelenka at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia.