I recently discovered a film adaptation of the Brothers Karmazov directed by Yuri Moroz and featuring Sergei Gorobchenko and Aleksandr Golubev. I ordered it few months ago but I haven’t gotten a change to really delve into it. Now that it’s summer I have the time! I re-read the Brothers Karamazov on the plane ride to Paris so it’s fresh in my mind. 

The film is entirely in Russian with English subtitles so it takes some focus to watch it. I think it must have been a made for TV movie because it’s in a series of episodes covering two discs. 
It totals to somewhere around eight hours. I think this is probably the best way to present this film. Cutting it into a basic 3 hour movie slot would have meant cutting out a lot of good content from the book. I’ve watched three episodes so far and I’m enjoying it.

If you haven’t read the book it’s a little hard to follow, especially with the subtitles. The beginning jumps around around in time and has to quickly convey important information about the family. It also gets tricky when faced with each character’s philosophy on life. If you haven’t read the book and aren’t thoroughly read up on why each character believes what they believe it can be confusing.

But I’ve always felt that if you’re going to watch a movie based on a book you may as well read the book first. So far I feel the film is doing a good job of presenting the full story without cutting scenes due to time restrictions. The acting is decent and the costumes and setting are good. I haven’t seen other film adaptations of this particular book but I was pretty impressed with how this one was handled.

Strange But True by John Searles was the first book I ever had signed by the author. I was a freshman and took a workshop with him through the Writer’s Project. Needless to say I was smitten with his words on writing, fancy job in New York City and fame as an author. The workshop probably wasn’t much different than the other workshop’s I’d taken but it felt so much better. This was my first encounter with a big-name author. Over the past four years I’ve met and grown to love a lot more of them through the Writer’s Project. But back then I was worried that he wouldn’t like me, that he’d think it was weird such a young kid was at his workshop, that he wouldn’t like my writing. But like almost all of the other writers I’ve met, he turned out to be a wonderful person, and extremely supportive of my interest in writing.

John took something of an interest in me, probably because I was the youngest person there by at least fifteen years. After the workshop he introduced me to his partner and his agent. He told his agent I’d be a big famous writer some day. To my fifteen year old self this was the biggest compliment I could be given. Admittedly I hadn’t read his book before the workshop and I ended up being one of those people who buys the book just to have him sign it. I felt guilty even then for doing that, I hate people who do that. But I got it signed and read it immediately afterwards. He wrote “For Celina- I’m so happy to meet you here in N.H. can’t wait to read your novel one day! Keep writing xoxo John.” Maybe he just thought of me as just a young kid with a cute dream of being a writer, but I still open that book up and read what he wrote when I’m doubting myself. Someday I hope I’ll be able to sign my book for him and thank him for having faith in me.  

I spent pretty much all of elementary school reading. Every day I’d go to the library and check out new books, read them that night and come back for more the next day. The librarian, Ms. Moore, took a liking to me, I suppose because I was there so often, and let me take out six books instead of the usual three or four or whatever it was. In third grade she recommended Agatha Christie to me. I was so flattered that she was recommending an adult book to me that I went and read every Christie book I could get my hands on. A few years ago my high school library was getting rid of some books and students could take them for free so I went to check it out. Lo and behold there was Agatha Christie’s Passenger to Frankfurt.I immediately grabbed it. That book has sat on my shelf since sophomore year. It was only a week ago that I picked it up again. My writers group is participating in the “Live Free or Die Die Die” short story contest. Basically you write a mystery/noir short story set in New Hampshire and the best ones get selected for an anthology. While I was trying to write my story I thought I should read some mystery novels to get inspired. And there was Passenger to Frankfurtjust waiting to be re-read. So this time I read it looking more at how she moved the plot along, created suspense and developed her characters rather than just reading to see what happens. Reading the book reminded me of the significance Agatha Christie has to me. Every time someone mentions her name I smile to myself, thinking of Ms. Moore. I just love when books are attached to memories like that. Christie might not be to fiction as Shakespeare is to theater but she’ll always have a special place on my bookshelf.