Eat the holy! The best foreign adaptations of Russian classics

The figure of Dostoevsky attracts the attention not only of Western, but also of Eastern readers. Akira Kurosawa, a classic of world cinema, shot his version of the famous novel, transferring the action from 19th century Russia to post-war Japan. The film’s protagonist returns to Hokkaido after being held captive. On the train, he meets a wealthy heir who tells him about his fatal lover. Despite the change of time and place of action, Kurosawa retains the main conflicts of the novel and its ideological component.

In his feature debut, classic Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki presents a meditation based on Dostoyevsky’s novel. The action takes place in contemporary Helsinki. The protagonist of the film is a student who wants revenge on the culprit of the accident in which his fiancée died. In this film adaptation there is a place for a detective playing mind games and for an occasional witness to the murder, who combines the features of Sonya Marmeladova and Dunya Raskolnikova and wants to help the hero confess to his deed.

This name hides a new arrangement of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. The film, starring Fanny Ardant, centers on the story of three sisters, the eldest of whom teaches at the university, the middle one is in an unhappy marriage and the youngest is a very young student. A measured life in a quiet Italian town is disrupted by the arrival of a former student of the sisters’ father.

Akira Kurosawa’s call to Maxim Gorky’s play “At the Bottom” may seem unexpected. The film takes place in a hut at the bottom of a ravine, where the poor find refuge. The director retains the character and plot structure of the original play. The main difference is that the action is transferred to Japan from the Edo period (17th century); Also, unlike the play, the film is more satirical in tone than tragic.

Foreign film adaptations of Anna Karenina or War and Peace no longer surprise anyone, but Tolstoy’s latest novel does not often appear to filmmakers. Italian directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani brought the story of serf Katyusha Maslova to hard labor to the screen, retaining the original location and time of the action. The film did not go unnoticed in Russia: it won the main prize at the Moscow International Film Festival.

Before the Taviani brothers, another Italian director, Luchino Visconti, turned to Russian classics. The action of Dostoyevsky’s novel is moved to post-war Italy. The film’s protagonist, played by Marcello Mastroianni, falls in love with a young Russian girl who is faithfully waiting for her fiancé who disappeared a year ago. The film received the Venice Film Festival award.

The psychological thriller starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska is a free take on Dostoyevsky’s story in modern realities and an almost theatrical setting. The film’s protagonist is a discreet office worker who can’t bring himself to make up his mind to court his beloved. Once in the office where the hero works, his most enterprising and daring copy appears, which gradually takes over his life.

The film is based on Chekhov’s play of the same name. The main character is the aristocrat Laevsky, played by Andrew Scott. He is burdened by a relationship with a woman he once alienated from her husband, but cannot leave her due to his obligations to her. Lies and accumulated irritation may escalate into something more serious.

If Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov often become the object of the attention of foreign filmmakers, then “our everything” Pushkin, without whom any conversation about Russian literature is unthinkable, remained practically unknown abroad. It is all the more curious to see one of the rare film adaptations with the famous Slavophile Ralph Fiennes and the beautiful Liv Tyler in the main roles. Not devoid of classic errors for such films, “Onegin” is, according to the director, “an English reaction to the Russian classics”.

Film adaptation of Chekhov’s play without great freedom of interpretation with a stellar cast. Four-time Oscar nominee Annette Bennig plays Irina Arkadina, Saoirse Ronan plays Nina Zarechnaya and rising British star Billy Hole plays desperate young playwright Konstantin Treplev. The film presents most of the events of the play in the form of flashbacks, with the backdrop of the beautiful summer landscapes of the estate where the main characters come from.