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.
That “The Idiot(s)” is the work of Polish filmmakers Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert, once a married couple whose personal and professional lives have long been intertwined, makes sense of their fashioning the narrative as a two-hander where Anna carries as much dramatic weight as Fyodor, if not more. The filmmaking duo, whose previous collaborations include “Never Gonna Snow Again” and “Infinite Storm,” largely based their tale on Andrew D. Kaufman’s novel “The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky.”
