The Brothers Karamazov

Those moviegoers who came to know and love Yul Brynner as the King of Siam in the film The King and I will be pleased to find him unchanged in his role of Dmitri in The Brothers Karamazov. His head is still bald; he still struggles with his emotions with the expressionless face of a man who has just sat through an elementary Hum. lecture; and his mien while watching Maria Schell (Grushenka) shake voluptuously through a rather fiery dance sequence in a Russian-style sin-den is not unlike the beaming countenance he displayed while greeting his numerous children each morning in The King and I.

In short, he is not the passionate Dmitri Karamazov whom Dostoevsky envisioned--the enormously complicated sensualist who could cry out, "When I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degrading attitude and pride myself upon it. . . . Though I may be following the devil I am Thy son, O Lord, and I love Thee."

Other of Dostoevsky's characters are similarly transformed. Ivan, the tormented intellectual of the novel, becomes an easy atheist in the movie and finds God and the true faith on the witness stand, when brought to testify against his brother: he is not the man who could have composed the masterful "Grand Inquisitor" or struggled with the devil himself near the close of the novel. The precariously saintly Alexey Karamazov is transformed into a sort of religious straight man, whose feeble pietisms and meaningful stares represent the religious instruction of the movie, and the idiot Smerdyakov becomes a shrewd, calculating, vengeful spirit who falls just a trifle short of being the film's dominant figure.

Only Lee J. Cobb as old Fyodor Karamazov manages to do justice to his role, and he completely steals the show. From the opening moments of the film where he is seen tickling the feet of a gypsy girl to his unforgettable scene with Father Zossima, he is nearly perfect.

The movie as a representation of the novel fails completely except for Cobb's performance. There is no Grand Inquisitor, none of the sequences from the portion of the novel called "The Boys," and the climactic trial scene contains none of the excitement and meaning which Dostoevsky was able to give it. As the movie ends, Ivan finds God; Dmitri finds Girl; cold, old Katya finds nothing; and Alexey finds that the workings of God are, as we long suspected, inscrutable.

And yet as a film in the best boy-meets-girl, boy-overcomes-almost-insuperable-obstacles, boy-gets-girl tradition, it is certainly enjoyable. The necessity of making a movie conform to American public morality--which ruined Graham Greene's The Quiet American when translating it onto film--does not have the same effect on The Brothers. It is a new story, but not a bad one. All the parts of this new tale are acted better than competently--especially by Cobb and Miss Schell, and although the title would perhaps be more accurate as True Love Triumphs in Old Russia, the movie should still make good watching for escapists--that is everyone.

However, if you happen to be out to fill your weekly culture quota or pick up some ideas for your Hum 4 exam, this is definitely not the flick to see.