Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Dostoevsky's novel "The Possessed" that this film under review today, Jean Luc-Godard's " La Chiniose" is based on.
Book Review
The Possessed, Fyodor Dostovesky, Barnes & Noble, New York, 2004
Dostoevsky was a central figure in the great Russian literary revival of the 19th century, spurred on by the clearly foreseen, and necessary coming revolution that was on every radical intellectuals mind. The Russian novel, in a sense, reflected, in one way or another, the propaganda written for that event. This novel, moreover, forms the intellectual backdrop for a review that I have recently done on Jean Luc-Godard's "La Chinoise" from 1967. That film used the story line of the novel as the script for a modern day version of the struggle of a group of young middle class intellectuals driven to despair by the political/cultural/social and existential circumstances of their lives, yet were unable to fight effectively for their vision of the future, mainly due to their devotion to the "circle" spirit and distance from the class struggles of their times.
Thus from different centuries and responding to different sets of circumstances the film and novel come to the same basic conclusion about the futility of struggle against authority, or the fear that the "new order" will be just a rehash of the old led to both director and author to some very unrevolutionary conclusions. Nevertheless, I always liked this novel, despite, or maybe, because of Dostoevsky's past and its service as a cautionary tale of the futility, at best, of fighting against authority. Of course, Dostoevsky came within a ready hangman's noose for his own radical activity so that might color his approach, at least a little. Right? But Godard, who knows.
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