Notes from Underground

In the beginning, everything is black. We hear the sound of a video camera being switched on, and a picture flickers to life. In front of the camera is a man trying to explain what he is doing there, though he only succeeds in complicating things for us. He says that he is ill. Probably it is his liver, but he refuses to visit a doctor. Not because he does not trust doctors, but because he is an evil man. No, not evil. He is not anything ... apart from ill, of course. Though not in his liver, but in his head. He thinks too much. And lies. He wants to stop lying, which is why he is telling us everything. The man in front of the camera is the hero from Gary Walkow's adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel Notes from Underground. We never get to know his name, but we soon realize that he has one of the most overheated brains in the history of film. His monologue in front of the video camera is sandwiched between the tale of events which happened twelve years ago, and which are now tormenting him. When we see him in flash backs, he is in the lower ranks of the civil service at the Ministry of the Interior. He enjoys having a degree of power, and of being able to make life difficult for those architects and contractors who want their plans approved. He does not have any friends, and is bitter though still reasonably satisfied with his unhappiness. He tries to raise his status by inviting himself to a farewell dinner for an old classmate. He knows that no-one wants him there, and the whole evening is one long humiliation. The evening ends at a brothel, where he meets a prostitute, who he persuades to follow him home. Dostoyevsky wrote large parts of his novel at his wife's deathbed, and as a result we see a very gloomy depiction of a person who finds himself at a psychological and social impasse. Director and scriptwriter Walkow has however succeeded in making Dostoyevsky's sombre tale both amusing and entertaining. It stars Henry Czerny, who makes us laugh with his nervous tics and shifty eyes. His character's reasoning and thoughts become comical when they are always driven to an extreme. But things turn serious after his meeting with the prostitute Liza. Our hero is offered an opportunity to substitute his hyper-individualistic and destructive way of life for self-sacrifice and love. The question being whether it is too late for him to pull himself out of the psychological squalor he has been living in for so long. PN