NABOKV-L post 0007479, Tue, 28 Jan 2003 12:27:50 -0800

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/arts/television/28HEFF.html



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January 28, 2003
Dostoyevsky's Twilight of Murder and Guilt
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN


irst, the names, since the story is Russian. There is Raskolnikov, a student, and Porfiry, the city magistrate. There is an angelic prostitute named Sonia. And there are Alyona Ivanovna, a pawnbroker, and Lizaveta, her half sister. These last two do not fare very well.

A two-part mini-series, "Crime and Punishment," an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's 1866 novel, will have its premiere tonight on Bravo. I hope I will not spoil suspense by revealing that fairly early on Raskolnikov viciously murders Alyona Ivanovna and Lizaveta, fulfilling a dare he has issued to himself; he then spends the rest of the film suffering for his crime. Apart from the murders, however, the drama of the novel is psychological. For this reason Nabokov once dismissed it as tediously abstract, maintaining that Dostoyevsky's obsession with moral questions kept him from writing vividly about the material details of actual life.

While such a novel might make for breathless reading, one so short on visual cues would presumably not offer much visual interest for a filmmaker. And yet, partly because Nabokov was grossly unfair about Dostoyevsky and partly because this film's intrepid director, Julian Jarrold, is so adept, Bravo's "Crime and Punishment" comes off ingeniously well. Alone among the movie and television versions of the novel (there have been at least four distinguished adaptations, beginning with a silent film in 1917), Jarrold's was shot on location, in Dostoyevsky's St. Peterburg. In place of weather "Crime and Punishment" offers the supernatural monotony of the city's white nights; the movie was actually filmed during the strange mid-summer perpetual twilight.

The effect is suitably ghastly. When we first see him, Raskolnikov (John Simm) ≈ livid, glazed, roughly shaven ≈ is already crazy, pacing along the banks of the Neva and through the squalid Haymarket. He is fretting over the question of whether certain great men (Napoleon, Raskolnikov himself) ought to be free from moral inhibitions. In distorted voice-over, he asks himself: "Will I do this? Will I do this?"

He will. During a visit to the greasy pawnbroker, to whom Raskolnikov is already indebted, he imagines his ax falling on her. During his next visit, it does. Black blood stains her hair. Raskolnikov then robs the place and tries to flee, only to confront Lizaveta, whom he also kills, though with considerable hesitation, for she is benign.

As Lizaveta is about to be bludgeoned, she lifts her skirt unevenly to protect her face, an act that inadvertantly bares her white, vulnerable legs. This striking detail is an inventive departure from the novel. Dark blood then splatters again; the city's uncanny light, viewed here on irregularly textured film, throws the gore into high contrast. A turbulent violin signals a moral emergency. Raskolnikov's punishment must begin.

In the Haymarket he has met Sonia (Lara Belmont), an abject Christian who prostitutes herself as a form of religious masochism. Though she knows nothing of Raskolnikov's crime, she lures him toward penance, while the magistrate Porfiry (Ian McDiarmid) hunts him, testing his will.

Raskolnikov spends the better part of the movie storming through alleys, dark stairwells and streets choked with sewage. He also tosses around in his garret, a terrible prison of crumbling plaster.

Mr. Simm, who resembles Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco, gives a superb performance, playing Raskolnikov as unwell, physically unreliable and foully unclean: a man with the comportment of a strung-out rock star. In time family and friends gather around him, but Raskolnikov is disconsolate. He dreams of Sonia, street scenes, the old pawnbroker. And soon ≈ after two brief, insidious run-ins ≈ he begins to dream of Porfiry.

Mr. McDiarmid, who appears fit, has said in interviews that he does not look like Porfiry, and indeed the Porfiry of Dostoyevsky's novel is stout. But Mr. McDiarmid uses his trim size, along with his smiling eyes, to create a magistrate who is menacing because he is ≈ initially at least ≈ genuinely appealing, receptive, flawed. He is the kind of judge to whom one might confess.

But Porfiry does not want Raskolnikov's confession right away; he wants to toy with the arrogant young killer as long as he can. (This Raskolnikov understands, bitterly admitting, "You don't catch a criminal; he catches himself.") As the two men stalk each other, Sonia proceeds in pious poverty; Raskolnikov's sister anticipates her impending marriage (for money), and her mother fears for all of them.

At last Raskolnikov asks Sonia, "Why haven't you gone mad?" When Sonia says simply, "I pray," and recites for Raskolnikov the story of Lazarus, his fate begins to turn. He confesses his crime to Sonia, who tells him: "Go to the Haymarket. Kiss the ground that you desecrated. God will give you your life back."

A plea for flat-out abjection is rare in American film ≈ to say nothing of American television ≈ and it is unlikely that viewers will find the conclusion of "Crime and Punishment" satisfying, though the lovers, Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov and Sonia Semyonovna, do end up together. It is romantic, in a Russian kind of way: they suffer deeply but honestly in a prison camp in Siberia.


CRIME AND PUNISHMENT


Bravo, tonight at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time
Written by Tony Marchant, based on the book by Dostoyevsky; directed by Julian Jarrold; director of photography, Eigil Bryld; edited by Chris Gill; production designer, Michael Carlin; music by Adrian Johnston; costumes by Rosie Hackett; produced by David Snodin; executive producers, Jane Tranter and Kate Harwood. A BBC production in association with Bravo.
WITH: John Simm (Raskolnikov), Ian McDiarmid (Porfiry), Shaun Dingwall (Razumikhin), Geraldine James (Pulcheria), Kate Ashfield (Dunya), Lara Belmont (Sonia), David Haig (Luzhin), Katrin Cartlidge (Katerina), Nigel Terry (Svidrigailov) and Philip Jackson (Marmeladov).

Virginia Heffernan is the television critic for Slate.



The New York Times



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