Die Karamazows

Karamazovi is newest movie from director Petr Zelenka which is by one group accepted as great screenwriter and really cosmopolitan director and by another group as poseur writing one dimensional characters with unrealistic dialogue and not much good storyteller. Karamazovi, adaptation of Dostojevskij masterpiece, and also adaptation of stage-play written by Czech director Evald Schorm, is his best piece so far.

In Zelenka's movies characters tried to get out from Czech Republic and if foreigns come to us, they're documenting us as some strangers (Japanese in Samotari/Loners). Karamazovi's plot is about concurs for a stage play at alternative festival in Poland and actors plays themselves, one of them trying to get out of Poland because he has got some filming in Czech Republic! Point of view has changed, but great atmosphere (thanks to composer A.P. Kaczmarek and cinematographer) with great actors (especially those who plays in Czech TV shitty-serials).

Zelenka in one interview said that he won't to shot movie like Trier his Dogville/Manderly and that he doesn't like his movies, especially last ones. But Karamazovi is sort of "Five Obstruction" auteur-destruction: Ivan Trojan gives another character DVD Loners (Loners was written by Zelenka and Trojan plays there, he plays even in last Zečlenka's movies Pribehy obycejneho silenstvi and now in Karamazovi) and one of character is epileptic same as Zelenka's wife so it's kind of in-joke.

Main thesis of this movie is that without an audience there is no art. Yeah, Zelenka'not really good storyteller and don't know what to do whit female characters... but Karamazovi is second best Czech movie for long years (after Vnewest movie by director Bohdan Slama Venkovsky ucitel, sadly not at IMDb). If you're thinking that Czech cinematography after 1898 is good, so... You're wrong because by year there's probably 20 or more movies and just three are watchable! And Karamazovi is that sort of movie that isn't good just for Czech audience (yeah, not another tragic comedy by Hrebejk!), but it's great for everybody. Because everyboy's are Karamazovi.

Is theater entertainment, or do actors in performance live on the sharp edges of blades and ride the needles that cut and sew ideas and social fabrics? Professionally and dispassionately, that is, just like other workers in public service, doing their jobs.

In this movie an intelligent Polish service worker with another career, handyman and building custodian, has the misfortune of preparing a makeshift set in a factory for a production of a "Karamazovs". The production and rehearsal is routine for the actors, but anything but routine for the Pole, for whom is that too-well-lit roadside set of hazard lights and explanations. His perfect storm.

Three times the number of American -based viewers just saw a screening of this as Euoropean IMDb raters, brought with the Director by the Czech Embassy and the Film Curator of the National Gallery of Art.

Be prepared for those serious issues of Fyodor D's: Chance, intent, patrimony and fraternity, predestination, and God. But, you're only watching a rehearsal; and the actors are loose, having done this many times before, so they won't pressure you to TAKE IT ALL SERIOUSLY. You can have a within-you / without-you experience. You're safe, but you've been threatened.

It is definitely one of the most amazing films I have ever watched! It is intimate, touchy, melancholic, artistic and beautiful at the same time.

The main plot and the subplot fit very well together while we see the play and try to make sense of it through the eyes of the technician.

And the acting! Boy they are amazing! I believe they are all stage actors & actresses which adds to the power of their performance. The actors are all marvelous and their chemistry is wonderful.

I specifically liked the performance of Father Karamazov. I would love to see him on stage, he is so captivating. In fact he reminded me of Haluk Bilginer who is a really amazing actor in Turkey.

I strongly recommend that you see this film with its insights to the post-communist era, great acting and plot, and its fantastic capturing of general human condition.

Although I come from East European country and I am also familiar with Russian literature, this movie did not get to me at all. There are some nice visual shots (especially, the ones of the old factory) and the music at moments is really compelling, but otherwise I would say that this movie seemed to be a very egocentric attempt of the director to produce high-end intellectual complexity and call it art. To my mind art never has to be complex, art is about simple things and showing them to the audience in a new light. This movie on the contrary was self-indulgent in its form. I could not grasp the connection between the theater play and the real-life stories and in the end could not tell what it was all about. Sons killing their fathers and fathers killing their sons? Well, to my mind there are better ways of elaborating on this than 1,5 hours long speaking in an unorganized imaginary play.

This film requires multiple viewings to untangle the complexities of life imitating art imitating life. So far I've only had one. The suffering of children because of their parents links the major contemporary plot line with the novel. Most of the dialogue is from Dostoevsky, whether or not the actors are on stage. Ivan Karamazov's atheist manifesto of returning the ticket to God's offer of paradise is somehow central. There must be significance in fact that the setting is the factory at Nowa Huta, a factory built at Stalin's behest and the later stage of Walesa's "Solidarnosc." The firs t, as well as last, scene of the play-within-a-play present the courtroom scene -- legal justice in counterpoint to divine justice. The moments of comic relief strike one with a similar inappropriateness as Fyodor Karamazov's buffonade. I almost envy the viewer who is neither aware of contemporary Eastern European history nor well acquainted with the novel, for the film is fascinating on the visual and sound levels as well. A feast for the film buff, if hard on the digestion.