{"id":884004,"date":"2026-09-05T07:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/884004\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T07:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:08:11","slug":"the-idiots-review-johnny-flynn-aimee-lou-wood-suffer-rapturously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/884004\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Idiot(s)\u2019 Review: Johnny Flynn, Aimee Lou Wood Suffer Rapturously"},"content":{"rendered":"

Broadly speaking, great works of Russian literature have a tendency to combine painfully austere themes with strangely rich imaginations. That rapturous clash, filtered through the paranoia of a guilt-driven crime thriller, helped make Fyodor Dostoevsky\u2019s serialized 1866 novel \u201cCrime and Punishment\u201d a global sensation. But at the start of \u201cThe Idiot(s)\u201d \u2014 Ma\u0142gorzata Szumowska and Micha\u0142 Englert\u2019s semi-surreal account of the Russian author\u2019s disastrous European honeymoon \u2014 success sends Dostoevsky (Johnny Flynn<\/a>) into a fit of writer\u2019s block that threatens to doom him and his new wife, Anna (Aimee Lou Wood<\/a>).<\/p>\n

At least as their marriage is presented here, the Dostoevskys probably shouldn\u2019t stay together quite as long as they do. And even packaged as a multilingual fantasy, draped in some of the most outrageously lush production design choices this side of Joe Wright\u2019s \u201cAnna Karenina,\u201d the making of \u201cThe Idiot\u201d is nearly as frustrating to watch on film<\/a> as it must have been to put on the page.<\/p>\n

\"'Remember<\/a> \"A<\/a> <\/p>\n

Szumowska and Englert make that misery work for them, to a point. Their ambitious film begins as the newlyweds arrive in Baden, where Fyodor\u2019s fame attracts fellow travelers \u2014\u00a0including rival Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev (Christian Friedel). The suspense that draws these particular elitists toward the Dostoevskys is the same tension that made \u201cCrime and Punishment\u201d magnetic for contemporary audiences, and \u201cThe Idiot(s)\u201d echoes the queasy allure of watching someone rationalize his way toward disaster.<\/p>\n

Fyodor, meanwhile, struggles to transform his inner turmoil into the literal \u201cIdiot,\u201d an intimidating totem that eventually became a dense exploration of the writer\u2019s views on innocence, jealousy, romance, and goodness. He proves as antagonistic as his fiction in \u201cThe Idiot(s),\u201d repeatedly gambling away what little money he and Anna have while his wife scrambles to keep them solvent.<\/p>\n

\u201cPain and suffering purify the soul,\u201d he contends, as the titular idiots submit themselves for an unfathomable amount of both across an ultimately punishing two hours. Fantasies from the perspectives of husband and wife interrupt that decline, forming an almost circus-like pattern of mutual destruction. As Anna covers for Fyodor\u2019s addiction and increasingly unstable professional behavior, her devotion starts to look poisonous for them both.<\/p>\n

Visions of executing her husband dance through her head with wonderful humor throughout. Still, she stays \u2014\u00a0and Wood punctuates her best scenes by swinging wildly in tone alongside the script. Grounded in tragedy and yet evoking a consistent sense of wonder, the lady of the house looks less like a mirror for her husband than a magnifying glass held over his genius and grotesquerie. (\u201cTell me I\u2019m a bad Russian,\u201d he coos in one of many bizarre kink scenes exploring the intimate side of the Dostoevskys\u2019 relationship.)<\/p>\n

Opposite her, Flynn does some of his best work when he is positively rotting in Fyodor\u2019s existential anguish. At a gathering with other artists, a seemingly playful party game culminates in an excruciating monologue about child abuse. And to Flynn\u2019s credit, Fyodor is profoundly hateable. That\u2019s plainly the point, but Anna\u2019s love for him provides \u201cThe Idiot(s)\u201d with its most poignant tether to reality.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s not a straightforward historical account. The screenplay \u2014 credited to Szumowska, Englert, Kasper Bajon, and Br\u00edd Arnstein \u2014 draws from Andrew D. Kaufman\u2019s biography \u201cThe Gambler Wife,\u201d as well as Anna\u2019s diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and other historical research. The real Anna first worked for Dostoevsky as a stenographer who helped him complete \u201cThe Gambler\u201d in 26 days. She did not officially co-write \u201cThe Idiot,\u201d but she lived through its creation while managing Fyodor\u2019s gambling, debts, epilepsy, and precarious career. Their first child also died during these years abroad.<\/p>\n

That distinction matters because \u201cThe Idiot(s)\u201d knowingly mixes biography with manifestations of imagination. Vicky Krieps is a particular scene-stealer as the mysterious Natasha F, a spectral variation on \u201cThe Idiot\u201d heroine Nastasya Filippovna who barely needs to speak to haunt the starring lovers\u2019 marriage. That device makes this sideways biopic a particularly rewarding companion piece for devotees of the novel, but it also demands a daunting amount of prior knowledge.<\/p>\n

Viewers unfamiliar with Dostoevsky may struggle to determine which women, flirtations, and betrayals belong to history \u2014\u00a0and which come from his fiction or are the original work of Szumowska and Englert entirely. That factual slipperiness might matter less if the psychology connected more deeply. But \u201cThe Idiot(s)\u201d explores the novel\u2019s themes without directly adapting or fully contextualizing them, leaving the intellectual exercise richer than many of the experience\u2019s actual rewards.<\/p>\n

The dizzying experience of imagining \u201cThe Idiot\u201d will always exceed any attempt to render its spirit onscreen; this film never finds a substitute for the novel\u2019s enormous interiority. That said, the surfaces are immaculate with Englert, serving as both co-director and cinematographer, moving through the Dostoevskys\u2019 decline with astonishing care. Ewa Mroczkowska\u2019s production design also turns dewy embankments, decadent interiors, and sunrises over cemeteries into visions of storybook-like decay.<\/p>\n

There is no question that these years of suffering are, in their own way, beautiful. But the love enduring at their center feels so profoundly misguided that even this extravagant tribute, arriving more than 150 years later, cannot entirely defend it.<\/p>\n

Grade: C+<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Idiot(s)\u201d premiered at the 2026 Telluride Film Festival. <\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Broadly speaking, great works of Russian literature have a tendency to combine painfully austere themes with strangely rich…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[95498,49,48,75,1554,193807,337,306674],"class_list":["post-884004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-aimee-lou-wood","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-johnny-flynn","tag-movies","tag-the-idiots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}