Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert always wanted to make a film about Fyodor Dostoevsky. It just took them a while to figure out how.
The directing duo, who previously helmed such films as “Never Gonna Snow Again,” “Woman Of…” and “Infinite Storm,” grew up in Poland reading Dostoyevsky’s great works, “totally under the influence of suffering and pain and everything coming from his literature,” Szumowska said. But the world has changed in the 100+ years since the novelist put pen to paper, making it difficult to approach his story head on in their new film “The Idiot(s)” (a nod to Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot,” which plays a central part in the story).
“If it’s going to be very serious, it’s a disaster these days,” Szumowska told me at TheWrap’s TIFF studio shortly after the film’s world premiere at Telluride. “We are laughing that he would be canceled these days probably.”
But Szumowska and Englert found a skeleton key that could unlock their long-desired biopic: Fyodor’s second wife, Anna Dostoevskaya. Adapting Andrew D. Kaufman’s “The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky” alongside co-writers Kasper Bajon and Brid Arnstein, Szumowska and Englert turned the camera on Fyodor’s spouse with a healthy dose of humor — an approach not everyone was overly fond of, Szumowska noted.
“At the end of the day, it’s like a deconstruction a little bit of male genius, which for some elderly men especially is very troubling, I’ve noticed,” she said. “Because it’s a very strange perspective: His literature was amazing, but he as a person was also a pathetic guy. Some people, they don’t want to accept this, you know? To us, it’s like he’s lovable, and we love him, even the way he is. In the Eastern European culture, it’s something very normal, all these nuances which are sometimes not so normal for Americans.”
Aimee Lou Wood of “The White Lotus” fame stars as Anna in “The Idiot(s),” the wife of a man who can’t get out of his own way long enough to write. By focusing on Anna’s perspective, Szumowska and Englert evade the “great man” stereotypes that often plague artist biopics and historical dramas, spending time with a lesser-known figure in literary history.
“I think it’s very accurate. I think it’s what happens a lot. All throughout history there’s pretty much always been a great woman behind because she couldn’t express her own level of genius or her perspective or her soul in the same way as he could because of the confines and constraints of the world. So that was kind of the only option at one point, was that you would use a man to also express you in the world,” Wood told me at TIFF. “It’s their contribution together, and I think it’s very important to remember that. There’s whole families and everything behind these great men that are kind of conveyed as these singular titans and geniuses, but there’s villages behind them that prop them up to be able to put that genius out into the world.”
Starring opposite Wood, Johnny Flynn takes on the role of Fyodor, portraying the great author as a man of deep flaws and struggles. He’s struggling with addiction, somewhat foppish and easily distracted from his great literary mission. As Wood put it, “He’s on a mission of self-destruction, and she’s on a mission to save them.” It’s a performance that unlocks the strangely comic tone of “The Idiot(s),” one that Flynn found quite liberating.
“I’ve had a huge joy in not necessarily feeling that I needed to protect the legacy of a man, and to be part of a portrayal of a relationship where the woman is really the wise one,” Flynn told me at TIFF. “The way I played it was that they really are in love, and he knows how lucky he is to have her, but he’s falling apart through the person he is.”
One of the most striking elements of ‘The Idiot(s)” is its comic, almost farcical energy — not the exact energy you would expect for a historical biopic about a Russian literary titan. But Englert was quick to say their latest effort isn’t just a comedy.
“I cannot find this movie only funny because I really like that it gets some serious tones as well. It maybe might be surprising for those who know Dostoevsky’s novels what kind of person stays behind his art. That was the key,” he told me at TIFF. “The key was the diaries of his wife and her perspective in somehow exposing all of his weaknesses, his obsessions and doubts and let’s say everyday life routines, which is sometimes which is very private, very intimate in a way. And that’s funny as well. I think it’s also interesting to see what happens when the doors are closed, yeah?”
“These days we have this tendency to classify things,” he continued. “This is funny, this is sad.”
“This is bad, this is good,” Szumowska added.
“It’s easy to be very judgmental,” Englert concluded. “This movie is kind of a praise to this territory, which is quite open to interpretation.”
For all its humor, Flynn was sure to note that “The Idiot(s)” is, at its core, a love story — and a story of forgiveness in the face of adversity.
“How do they get through it? How do they eventually produce this piece of work? It’s her and her wisdom as the younger person and her generosity as well. From inside of it making it, I fell in love with these two people, and I felt like they were deeply, deeply connected,” he said. “I haven’t seen a love story like that, where there’s that level of forgiveness, which I find very, very touching. We all f–k up, but these days we’re very quick to throw people under the bus.”
