Films heavily inspired by Dostoevsky

[woland]

Yeah "The Machinist" definitely had both "Crime and Punishment" and "The double" in mind... I think I read something on this somewhere as well... But the tortured conscience of a criminal is definitely from C&P and the double of himself,( though it isn't an identical double) I've read in an article about the movie that this idea is taken from "the double"... The movie is interesting as one could almost take the double character for Svridigalov from C&P at times... but maybe that's going a little far.. It's definitely a Dostoevsky based movie though...
  Taxi Driver's main character Travis Bickle is straight out of Notes from the Underground.. he is another underground man rejected by and rejecting the contemporary metropolitan society... Scorcese even says this is where the character comes from.. and the audience often addressed in Notes, the frequent You's of dialogue with the reader, "Taxi Driver" makes one feel one is in the movie in the back seat of the cab...

[underworld men]

what about "Donnie Darko"? Its extremely dark and follows some of the perspectives of Dostoevsky. not to mention, i think in music and i cant help but think of Dostoevsky. just listen to the official web sites background music if you havent seen it...

http://www.donniedarko.com/

I thought this movie was taking a jab at Dostoevsky.

With the whole Patrick Swayze character on one hand preaching love and then on the other being a pedophile.

It seemed to be following the whole anti-Dostoevsky angle from Freud and Virginia Woolfe.

How were Freud and Virginia Woolfe anti-Dostoevsky? I've not read much Virginia Woolfe, but I had always heard Freud was heavily influenced by D.

http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/top3mset/a76f356eb322e4f9.html

[lerik]

What do you think about the movie "Seven"?You can also see some aspects of Crime and Punishment.The murderer hated the victims and they werent innocent and he like Raskolnikov made the mistake of thinking he had the right to end their lives.

[omahaha]

what about "Donnie Darko"? Its extremely dark and follows some of the perspectives of Dostoevsky. not to mention, i think in music and i cant help but think of Dostoevsky. just listen to the official web sites background music if you havent seen it...

http://www.donniedarko.com/

I thought this movie was taking a jab at Dostoevsky.

With the whole Patrick Swayze character on one hand preaching love and then on the other being a pedophile.

It seemed to be following the whole anti-Dostoevsky angle from Freud and Virginia Woolfe.

How were Freud and Virginia Woolfe anti-Dostoevsky? I've not read much Virginia Woolfe, but I had always heard Freud was heavily influenced by D.

http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/top3mset/a76f356eb322e4f9.html

That link didn't tell me much. My guess is they tried insinuating that D was a pedophile. Am I close?

[underworld men]

what about "Donnie Darko"? Its extremely dark and follows some of the perspectives of Dostoevsky. not to mention, i think in music and i cant help but think of Dostoevsky. just listen to the official web sites background music if you havent seen it...

http://www.donniedarko.com/

I thought this movie was taking a jab at Dostoevsky.

With the whole Patrick Swayze character on one hand preaching love and then on the other being a pedophile.

It seemed to be following the whole anti-Dostoevsky angle from Freud and Virginia Woolfe.

How were Freud and Virginia Woolfe anti-Dostoevsky? I've not read much Virginia Woolfe, but I had always heard Freud was heavily influenced by D.

http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/top3mset/a76f356eb322e4f9.html

That link didn't tell me much. My guess is they tried insinuating that D was a pedophile. Am I close?

Well a pedophile, homosexual and I think they would throw in cirus freak if they thought they could have gotten away with it. Though it is rumor at best that the actual trial that Dostoevsky went through in real life (he was aquitted since it was hearsay) for pedophila was a retalitation from his previous "associates" who's left wing agenda was greatly disrupted by Mr Dostoevsky's writings. So usually when one experiences this kind of static, it is coming from a source because they are threatened by Mr Dostoevsky's message and can do nothing but take cheap shots.

As for the secret society that Dostoevsky turned against and was then almost destroyed by. It is very important to keep in mind the relationship between the real life Petra Verkhovensky  AKA Sergie Nechayev who was Mikhail Bakunin's little buddy and of course what the actual Petrashevsky Circle WAS. Demons is about this secret society. It however does not give away everything about the group.

[Astolfo]

  Totally agree on Kurosawa, the evident (as in "onscreen") connection between C'n'P and The Machinist and the FD's overtones in Donnie Darko, and will shortly check those quotes in The Ice Age. Not forgetting Zulawksi's half-botched attemp to rethink Demons in La Femme Publique. And how can we avoid mentioning Richard Brook's The Brother Karamazov (1958), with Yul Brinner as Dimitri, Richard Basehart as Ivan and William Shatner as Alyosha?

    I also once catched a glimpse of Les Fréres Karamazov (French late Sixties Tv series), the episode with Ivan's encounter with the Devil, who in this case was Michel Lonsdale, a great and undervalued franco-brit actor. Have never seen Wajda's version of Demons, though. Bresson, on the other hand, not only used FD tangentially (but with full credit) in Pickpocket, he also directed Une femme douce (1969), another FD adaptation that actually launched the career of its protagonist, Dominque Sanda, soon to become a major Seventies Euro Artflick star (think The Conformist, or Il Giardino dei Finzi Contini).

   And in my humble opinion, the best book-to-screen adaptation of one of FD's works still remains Visconti's Le Notti Bianche, with an incredible lead performance by Marcello Mastroianni.

   But what I REALLY wanted to point out was that (by far) the contemporary film that most reminded me of FD's oeuvre, of its themes and obsessions, its obscenity and purity, was Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant. We have moral corruption, moral dilemmas, descent into moral hell and  (sorta) moral redemption, discussion of good and bad and God's grace and forgivness, sacrilege and rape and discussions on the morality of the Church, a degenerate gambler stuck on his bad bets, a saint like female character, and even a bona fide Christic apparition (instead of TKB's Devil)!

   Am I the only one to have noticed?

[omahaha]

 Totally agree on Kurosawa, the evident (as in "onscreen") connection between C'n'P and The Machinist and the FD's overtones in Donnie Darko, and will shortly check those quotes in The Ice Age. Not forgetting Zulawksi's half-botched attemp to rethink Demons in La Femme Publique. And how can we avoid mentioning Richard Brook's The Brother Karamazov (1958), with Yul Brinner as Dimitri, Richard Basehart as Ivan and William Shatner as Alyosha?

   

He he

[omahaha]

 
   But what I REALLY wanted to point out was that (by far) the contemporary film that most reminded me of FD's oeuvre, of its themes and obsessions, its obscenity and purity, was Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant. We have moral corruption, moral dilemmas, descent into moral hell and  (sorta) moral redemption, discussion of good and bad and God's grace and forgivness, sacrilege and rape and discussions on the morality of the Church, a degenerate gambler stuck on his bad bets, a saint like female character, and even a bona fide Christic apparition (instead of TKB's Devil)!

   Am I the only one to have noticed?

I haven't seen Bad Lieutenant. I'll have to check it out.

[Astolfo]

  You definitely should. After all, there are no bad motives to watch a great film.

    More about the topic: there is (to my eyes, at least) a clearly dostoevskan sensibility running troughout Kiezlowksi's Dekalog, specially the "thou shalt not kill" episode (also expanded as a movie of its own, A Short Film About Killing) . It also may be argued that had FD been Jewish and also equipped with modern technology, he could have easily directed  The Believer (Henry Bean, 2001), wich in my view runs right up his alley.

    I also have to say that I disagree on Scorsese: much too Catholic. But of course Travis Bickle (and Rupert Pumkin, in The King of Comedy) being as they are alienated marginalized and neurotic byprouducts of the modern age, surely owe something to the Underground Man, who is the conceptual and sylistical grandad of every first-person-shooter soliloquizer in the history of letters ever since (including Patrick Bates and John Self). His was the rant that started all rants, so to speak.

   On the other hand, some of the mid-period Bergman has a FD touch about it -take for instance the psychotic theology of Through a Glass Darkly, or the claustrophobic and sexed up The Silence. I also heard about a modern day americanized version of Notes from the Underground (Gary Walkow, 1995), some said it was good some said it sucked. Anybody out there has seen it?

   And let us not forget Josef von Sternberg's version of C'n'P (1935) with the immortal Peter Lorre as Raskolnikov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9UDOQ6bYyw

[underworld men]

 Totally agree on Kurosawa, the evident (as in "onscreen") connection between C'n'P and The Machinist and the FD's overtones in Donnie Darko, and will shortly check those quotes in The Ice Age. Not forgetting Zulawksi's half-botched attemp to rethink Demons in La Femme Publique. And how can we avoid mentioning Richard Brook's The Brother Karamazov (1958), with Yul Brinner as Dimitri, Richard Basehart as Ivan and William Shatner as Alyosha?

   

He he

Man that movie sucked.

[underworld men]

 You definitely should. After all, there are no bad motives to watch a great film.

    More about the topic: there is (to my eyes, at least) a clearly dostoevskan sensibility running troughout Kiezlowksi's Dekalog, specially the "thou shalt not kill" episode (also expanded as a movie of its own, A Short Film About Killing) . It also may be argued that had FD been Jewish and also equipped with modern technology, he could have easily directed  The Believer (Henry Bean, 2001), wich in my view runs right up his alley.

    I also have to say that I disagree on Scorsese: much too Catholic. But of course Travis Bickle (and Rupert Pumkin, in The King of Comedy) being as they are alienated marginalized and neurotic byprouducts of the modern age, surely owe something to the Underground Man, who is the conceptual and sylistical grandad of every first-person-shooter soliloquizer in the history of letters ever since (including Patrick Bates and John Self). His was the rant that started all rants, so to speak.

   On the other hand, some of the mid-period Bergman has a FD touch about it -take for instance the psychotic theology of Through a Glass Darkly, or the claustrophobic and sexed up The Silence. I also heard about a modern day americanized version of Notes from the Underground (Gary Walkow, 1995), some said it was good some said it sucked. Anybody out there has seen it?

   And let us not forget Josef von Sternberg's version of C'n'P (1935) with the immortal Peter Lorre as Raskolnikov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9UDOQ6bYyw

Well the American version of underground it was good but not funny so it's missing an extremely critical component.

[omahaha]

 
   
   On the other hand, some of the mid-period Bergman has a FD touch about it -take for instance the psychotic theology of Through a Glass Darkly, or the claustrophobic and sexed up The Silence. I also heard about a modern day americanized version of Notes from the Underground (Gary Walkow, 1995), some said it was good some said it sucked. Anybody out there has seen it?

   

Through a Glass Darkly, The Silence and Winter Light are great meditations about a world without God. They are tender but hopeless I think. The writer in Through a Glass Darkly says at the end that perhaps love is proof of God's existence. Yet he seems not to believe it and is obviously incapable of loving those closest to him, ultimately only caring about his work. Hence his son parodies him in the play: "Oblivion shall own me, and death alone shall love me." Great line.

[Astolfo]

  I agree with you about Through a Glass Darkly: the pseudo healing touch at the end does no t and cannot change the fact that the writer is incapable of true love, and that his daughter's madness (and is it just madness? isn't the spider-God she hallucinates a monstruous incarnation of the absence of God her father taught her, though the diary she's read?) and his inability to cope with it condemn him to spiritual sterility.....a  very dostoevskian theme, if you ask me.

[Hungry Year]

"Rikos ja rangaistus"  by Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki

<Crime and Punishment>

[RodionRaskolnikov]

Crimes and Misdemeanors was definitely influenced by Dostoevsky, and Crime and Punishment in particular (the title it seems is even a nod to Dostoevsky's novel). But of course the ending in the Woody Allen film is, by contrast, nihilistic.

I don't know if Dostoevsky had any influence on Anthony Burgess or Stanley Kubrick, but A Clockwork Orange shares a thematic similarity with Dostoevsky's work in the subject of free will. Both the film and the book argue its importance even when people use their free will to make bad choices, like Alex.

The Night of the Hunter also has a thematic similarity, which is the suffering of children, but I don't know if Dostoevsky was a direct influence.

This is another where I can't really speak on whether Dostoevsky was an influence, but there's a scene in The Last Temptation of Christ that reminded me of The Grand Inquisitor. When Jesus is being tempted with the life of a man, he encounters Paul performing a sermon, and after he confronts him, telling him that he didn't die on the cross (yet), Paul responds in a way that instantly made me think of Ivan's story in The Brothers Karamazov.

There's also Taxi Driver and Rope, both of which I feel quite confident were influenced by Dostoevsky. (In the case of Taxi Driver, I think Notes from Underground was acknowledged as an influence). I believe Kurosawa has also cited Dostoevsky as an influence. I haven't seen The Idiot yet, but I plan on holding out until I read the novel. Ditto on Red Beard, which from what I understand is also based on The Insulted and the Injured. (I've only recently become a fan, by the way, so there's still a lot I haven't read.)