Bratya Karamazovy (2009) User Reviews

Superior adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 17 July 2015]

The Brothers Karamazov is for me one of the masterpieces of foreign literature, and has very quickly become an all-time favourite, because of how compelling the story is, how interesting and thought-provoking the themes are and the brilliance of the multi-dimensional characterisation. Because of the huge length, the somewhat sprawling structure, the religious and philosophical elements and the amount of depth there is to the characters it is also an incredibly difficult book to adapt.

Of the two adaptations seen of The Brothers Karamazov, this and the 1958 film, this is the superior version of the two. Both this said are more than watchable on their own merits and adapt the book bravely. This 2009 Russian TV series version has shortcomings. The music score is a little uneven, sometimes it's fitting, elegantly simple and hauntingly beautiful but in other places it can feel too lush and sentimentalised where a grittier, suspenseful approach would have been more appropriate. Sergey Gorobchenko does well as Dmitri, especially in the more vulnerable parts, but doesn't quite bring the same amount of intensity that Yul Brynner did so splendidly in the earlier version, and while it was good to have the Grand Inquisitor scene included this time it felt rushed through, also feeling heavy-handed and with nowhere near the tension and impact it ought to have. There were times where the subtitles were rather suspect and out of sync, but the translation made sense mostly and wasn't too hard to follow.

However, Bratya Karamazovy looks great, with a great sense of the 19th-century Russia period with its grittiness and opulence, beautifully done exteriors, evocative costuming and props and very handsome photography that didn't feel too staid or too flashy. The script writing is very clever and thoughtful, as well as making a real effort and succeeding in keeping the essence and tone of Dostoevsky's writing without being too rambling or wordy. With the story, it is here where it scores better than the film version. The longer length meant that we were treated to more of the story and that the major scenes were utilised to their full potential, and while the pacing is measured it never felt dull because there was a lot happening, with more of the substance and impact than in the film and with more time to let it all sink in and reflect on it all. The telling of the story is quite faithful on the whole, with the big deviations being the beginning and the end, and, apart from the disappointing treatment of the Grand Inquisitor scene it's told with the right amount of tension, suspenseful mystery and emotion.

Characterisation is also superior here, while understandably not as complex as in the book the characters are better developed here, with the writing for Alexei/Alyosha being significantly improved and far more interesting and a better balance between characters, Dmitri's story is pivotal here but the rest of the characters thankfully are not treated any less importantly. It's well directed and the performances are solid, with Sergey Koltakov's intimidating Fyodor (a very juicy patriarchal character that could have easily been overplayed or too much of a hammy caricature), Masha Shalaeva's playful but touchingly conflicted Liza and Anatoliy Belyy's very nuanced Ivan being the standouts. Aleksandr Golubev charms and moves as Alexei, Elena Lyadova allures while also bringing an appropriate amount of earthiness and without being too genteel, Viktoriya Isakova is spot on as Katerina and Pavel Derevyanko's Smerdyakov is suitably insidious.

All in all, a very well done version of a very hard-to-adapt masterpiece, and superior to the 1958 film version. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Very Good Adaptation

[hosolo · 8/10 · 23 July 2018]

I read the book over a decade ago, the entire 900 pages plus, and then saw the 1958 Yul Brynner movie version which was okay and all the principal actors were terrific but the story left out the Grand Inquisitor and Ivan's hallucination with the devil, two of the most memorable chapters in the book. So needless to say there was some disappointment with the Hollywood version. Though I will say it's understandable why those very lengthy chapters, philosophical in nature and not something most Americans have patience sitting through, were omitted.

Thankfully with this 12 part mini series the most essential parts of the book are covered, including the Grand Inquisitor and the Devil scene. The Brothers might have looked differently than what I imagined when reading the novel over a decade ago, but I genuinely found them to be the characters in the book. And since this was filmed almost a decade ago, it's a great companion to anyone who has the read the book. I'm only reviewing this now because someone I know just watched the Hollywood version, but she didn't know about the more complete storytelling of this novel is found in the Russian formats (with necessary English subtitles). This is definitely better than the 1958 Hollywood version, but I still recommend reading the book first.

On it's own this 12-part mini series re-tells the story as close to written words as possible. Really well done, not dull and yes it has a "soap opera" quality that makes it entertaining. Recommended for anyone who had patience to read the novel, then see it in action!

The 9 hour long adaptation of Dostoievsky's greatest novel is a passion of crying all the way.

[clanciai · 10/10 · 12 March 2015]

This overwhelmingly beautiful and true to the original rendering of one of the greatest novels ever written, if not the greatest, leaves nothing else to wish for, and yet it is worth while comparing it to Richard Brooks' version of 1958. Maria Schell and Lee J. Cobb remain supreme in their interpretations of Grushenka and the monstrously self-indulgent father, while all the brothers are more convincing and true in this ultimate Russian version. It is nine hours long, and yet you willingly sacrifice all the time it takes and afterwards look forward to seeing it once again in a later future. The colouring is not as expressionistic as in the Richard Brooks version, the drama is not overstressed by intensity and outbursts but much more contained, the colour imagery is on the contrary rather Spartan and not far from a black-and- white impression, only contrasted by some beautiful sweeps into nature, especially the very last scene, which is more Tolstoyan than Dostoievskian. But the main triumph of the film, which underlines its character of infinite and bottomless and yet triumphant tragedy, is the music, very modest and simple but strikes the heart immediately, by Henri Lolashvili. Just the introductory scene, which presents each of the twelve episodes except the last, strikes such a true chord of the story that any heart could melt immediately. This is a regular triumph of classical Russian realism. Enough said. It's a self-evident full score without reservations.

Truly superb adaptation of Dostoevsky's masterpiece

[jjshepherd-86542 · 10/10 · 13 May 2022]

I watched this adaptation just after having finished the novel. To adapt his last and longest novel with the intention of following the source material as close as possible, and succeeding, is, alone, worthy of praise. This adaptation follows the original novel with all the important scenes, no characters being left out, while changing certain things from the novel just enough so that the story works better in the film format rather than prose narrative.

Giving the characters the attention they deserve was done very effectively in this adaptation. Comparatively to the 1958 film, one major flaw I saw was the lack of development given to Ivan, and even Alyosha neither of whom in that film is got anywhere near the time they deserved. That is not so in this version, with the 12 episodes, Mitya, Ivan, Alyosha and Smerdyakov all get sufficient development so they are understood, especially if one hasn't read the novel.

All the major actors do their roles quite well, especially Aleksandr Golubev as Alyosha, the hero of the whole tale; Sergey Gorobchenko is also well performed and can easily be empathized with as Mitya, and Pavel Derevyanko is also superb as the mysterious and cruel Smerdyakov. Sergey Koltakov did the role as the selfish and hedonistic Fyodor Karamazov as if the character was right from the pages. The actors for the other minor characters are also well chosen, whether that is Mariya Shalayeva as Alyosha's mischievous love interest Lise, or the gentleman who portrayed Father Zosima. The only slight casting error I think was made was the two central women: Grushenka and Katya, played respectively by Elena Lyadova and Viktoriya Isakova. Both are very good actresses, but I sort of feel it *might* have worked better if their roles were reversed, with Mrs. Isakova as Grushenka and Ms. Lyadova as Katya. It's doesn't at all detract from the show however and they both nonetheless did quite well with their very emotional roles they played.

Most other aspects of the series are great as well: the cinematography, while clearly on a budget, was often beautiful, and the music was atmospheric and added to the emotions felt.

Overall, the series is a great adaptation of Dostoevsky's final novel that captures all the drama, emotion and power of the novel for anyone looking to experience the novel again, or just wants to familiarize themselves with the story before reading it.

Highly recommended.

Dx: Dysfunctional

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 15 April 2014]

I've been trying to figure out what makes "The Brothers Karamazov" a great tale while similar fat books -- and the movies made from them -- turn into kitsch or historical curiosities. Years ago I read Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind," a story of love, intrigue, conflict, money, and social status. It's an epic, despite its vulgarity and its repulsive sentiment. But, like "The Brothers Karamazov," it's a big fat book with a gripping narrative.

I think the difference may lie in the way the characters are limned in. Everyone in "Gone With the Wind" is bigger than life, but they're not very real. They're animated points of view. The characters may or may not be lovable but they're uniformly dumb. The only person who learns anything is Rhett Butler, and only at the very end.

In "The Brothers Karamazov", the characters are inconsistent, the way people are in life. Fyodor, the dissolute semi-father, is usually drunk and given to orgies, even with his wife in the house. Yet, at a meeting with the Holy Elder, he's so awed by the Monk's humility that he's struck speechless. And he has mercurial bonds with his sons. Mostly he never thinks of them but, from time to time, he weeps with affection for them.

The story is deeper, too, than that of Mitchell's novel. "Gone With the Wind" is the story of Scarlett O'Hara. "The Brothers Karamazov" is the story of a struggle within a family and a relationship with God that resembles that between Fyodor and his sons. It has to do with guilt, a universal source of human distress. (Where is the guilt in "Gone With the Wind"? Nowhere. Shame and depression, but no guilt.)

This particular rendering of Dostoyevsky's novel must have been shot on a low budget. The color is washed out and the musical score sounds like something from a cheap Italian grindhouse movie. Most of it takes place indoors and with a bit of imagination it could easily have been turned into a theatrical production. The director, though, has incorporated some striking visuals. Check out the opening credits. The screen looks like some abstract painting until we finally hear boots crunching through snow and a line of gray-coated men shuffling across the screen.

The small budget makes it possible, or even necessary, for indoor conversations about human conundrums to be left more or less intact. There aren't any wild horse races, as there are in the Hollywood version. The performances here are adequate, not much more than that. Many people made fun of Yul Brynner in the American film, I think mainly because shaved heads were so uncommon. In one of his novels, Anthony Burgess ridiculed a Yul Brynner figure known as "the Bald Adonis of Greater London." But Brynner brings a frenzied intensity to the role of Dmitri that Sergey Gorobchenko lacks. As the youngest and most virtuous son, Alyosha, Aleksandr Golubev is a little more convincing than William Shatner was in 1965. Shatner was young and handsome and properly dressed and groomed but he could never help looking a little SLY.

This is an inexpensive movie but not a bad one. It's just long and it lacks color. It's in no way an insult to the writer or the viewer. And the final line is not some banality like, "I'll cry tomorrow."

Even this is permitted?

[hte-trasme · 4/10 · 10 July 2014]

The Brothers Karamazov is a complicated, discursive, and philosophical novel -- and those elements are indispensable to its greatness. They also, I would think, work against it when it comes to the necessarily somewhat reductionist form of the filmed adaptation. This ambitious effort has the strong advantage going in of taking place over ten episodes, allowing much more of the substance of the book to be retained.

In that an in its tone it seems to be trying to draw from the same string as another serialized Russian-television Dostoevsky adaptation from a few years before -- Vladimir Bortko's fantastic 2003 series of The Idiot. But this has almost none of The Idiot's success unfortunately.

Though we have twelve episodes to work with, the running time is actually much lower, as each is only just over forty minutes long, and I think about six of those are taken up with a long and eventually very irritating opening sequence that shows the same underscored scene each time.

There is an effort to represent many scenes from the novel, but perhaps this effort taken in almost too many. Most of them are not done any measure of justice, and together they fail to make a coherent, watchable, contextual whole. In fact, if I had not read the novel before I had watched this adaption, I don't think I would actually have known what was going on the whole time. That's a big problem, and I don't know whether it comes from too much of an assumption of familiarity with the source or an attempt to fit so many specifics that the big picture it lost.

In the scenes that are selected, ether are problems caused by the twin facts that what is given attention is rather random and does not seem to correlate with what is most important or necessary to the narrative, and the fact that the makers included many small, unnecessary changes to the substance of the source, of which none were effective. Normally, I don't mind an adaptation taking liberties with the source, but this one took all ineffective ones after seeming really to invite comparison with the novel.

From the start, we have a narrator who pops in an out of the first episode before disappearing, indicating an inability to get the back- story across without narration, or indecisiveness about what to do about the present-but-apparently-somewhat-disinterested narrator of the novel. We see the Karamazov brothers playing together is as children, rather that having been raised apart -- and this just sets the tone.

Notably, the famous "Grand Inquisitor" scene is reduced to some ineffective voice-over by Ivan over one or two shots of the Inquisitor and Christ, only for a pointless and largely dialogue-free sequence of Dmitri being crucified to be added later after he is interrogated for the murder of Fyodor. This smacks of the filmmakers opining about the work rather than adapting it.

The trial of Dmitri has virtually all of the arguments and characterization removed from it, but it still lasts quite long -- so it's in keeping with the atmosphere of the adaptation of a philosophical novel that has had most of the philosophy removed. And we end with an inappropriate image of the brothers together as children, when Dostoevsky make a point of indicating that they grew up apart.

The acting is largely adequate enough, for some of these roles a very high standard is required, which the cast just does not quite meet. Only two actors distinguish themselves -- Sergey Koltakov and Fyodor Karamazov and Masha Shalaeva as Liza.

All that can be said in the end is, "well, they tried." I admire the ambition of doing this adaptation, but it can't be called a success.