As biographical films on major historical figures go, “The Idiot(s)” starts off with an advantage over most, since it covers only a finite, conflict-laden passage of its subject’s storied life. This enjoyably off-kilter dramedy then further ingratiates itself with viewers bored of traditionalist hagiographies, because it also functions as a biting exercise in separating the art from the artist.
That’s not precisely with the intention of justifying one’s enjoyment of a creator’s body of work despite their unsavory personal past; on the contrary, the hope is that even as the less flattering characteristics of seminal Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky are exposed, one can still find value in his perspective. The image of the bearded wise man behind literary landmarks that dissect the human condition is exchanged for that of a wretched gambler, a drunken fool drowning in his childish arrogance, thus deliberately detaching him from the grandeur of his oeuvre.
Here he’s closer to some of his doomed characters than to the polished mirage of intellectual depth on painted portraits and photographs. This Dostoevsky (Johnny Flynn)—made of flesh, blood, vomit and other impolite bodily fluids — and his much younger wife Anna (Aimee Lou Wood) have arrived in Germany on their honeymoon. The famed he accrued with “Crime and Punishment” follows him, yet the pompousness of Western Europe disgusts Fyodor, an insufferably proud Russian. Early on in the film, he out-Russians his compatriot and fellow scribe Ivan Turgeniev (Christian Friedel, “The Zone of Interest”) in an impromptu dance off. The cowardly, devious Turgeniev has assimilated to the comforts of the West —that alone is enough for Fyodor to detest him.
