The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Yet again, Petrov's attention to expressive detail is superb in this adaptation of Dostoevsky's story. We meet a man travelling on a train - well his body is, his mind is elsewhere. The dull, monotonic, narration tells us he is dwelling on the futility of his life and on thoughts of a bullet putting him out of his misery. Walking home he meets a young urchin who begs for help. He walks on by, ignoring her pleas, and goes to bed. It's in his dreams that we spend much of the next ten minutes and I found these to fairly biblical at times. Idyllic in nature to start then becoming more corrupt and vile, and his psyche amidst the dream seems to be trying to find where, if at all, his responsibility for this alternative world might lie. When he awakens, he must make a choice. Might it be better to live well in a flawed world - or to succumb to it's flaws and face something far, far worse. For some reason, the depiction of the man's face reminded me of Lenin throughout, the winkles and the earnestness in his eyes. The girl - well she could have been a poster girl for the French (or any other) revolution. A young child devoid of hope, or expectation, or love - and expertly captured here in her rags. The imagery is cold and bleak and it does largely accentuate the horrors of a world all about self. Astonishingly potent to watch.

'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1992)' was Aleksandr Petrov's third film as director, after 'Marathon (1988)' and 'Korova (1989).' It's the work of an animator who's well-and-truly become comfortable with his craft; nobody with doubts about his own talents would ever attempt something as ambitious as a Dostoevsky story. Unfortunately, like most of Petrov's works, the film is notoriously difficult to follow if you don't already know what is going on. He delights in blending realism with fantasy, decisively blurring the line between the two, and so it didn't help that I ventured into the film without English subtitles. Nevertheless, from a purely visual standpoint, there can be little doubt that 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man' is an incredible piece of art, a shifting canvas of vivid oil paints that more closely resemble an Expressionist masterwork. Unforgettable dream-like images – the flicker of passing lights through a train window, a dazzling Utopian land beneath the blazing sun, the gleam of flaming dancers – retain their strength even after the film itself has come to an end.

Unable to understand any of the dialogue, I was forced to piece together the story through its vague images, aided by a brief synopsis of Dostoevsky's original short story. A lonely man, having decided that nothing in his life matters to him anymore, rejects a young girl's pleads for help before returning to his apartment to contemplate suicide. Yet unable to commit the act, the man instead falls asleep and dreams of his death, after which he is whisked from his grave and transported to a Utopian island where it is always sunny. However, after he tells a lie, the entire land is swiftly consumed by the cold hand of sin. The man awakens, and returns to help the young girl whom he had earlier brushed off, having been handed a new lease on life. 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man' is an excellent work of Russian animation from one of the field's most impressive artists, meticulous enough to rank up there with the director's finest – which are, for the sake of reference, 'The Old Man and the Sea (1999)' and 'My Love (2006).'

What is the point of doing good? Is there any evidence of a sense in life? Then, is it not doing good as senseless as being a villain? Dostoevsky takes this question and discusses it in his passionate way in a short story: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.

The story of Dostoevsky walk us through reality and dream, up to the point where reality and dream become two equally possible universes. I would say three potentially real words, as the dream comes in two successive versions: humanity before and after the fall. And the answer of Dostoevsky is, if I understood it correctly, that the sense is given by our capacity of choice: we choose to do good or not, and it is our choice that gives sense to our life.

Aleksandr Petrov adapted the story of Dostoevsky and made it a 20 minute animation. Petrov found here in full blow the religious dimension he seems to be particularly interested in. On the other side, telling in images the story of the ridiculous man is challenging, as it is highly symbolical. Petrov proceeded straightforward, so to speak: he simply followed the text and left the interpretation for us.

A brilliant adaptation of a Dostoevsky story done using mindblowing animated narrative. The complex themes of the story are used to explore the possibilities of the type of animation used in creating a dream and/or nightmare of the human condition. This short film talks a lot in its 20-minute runtime that many films fail to do in hours.