I have to admit that I was rather skeptical, going to see Navrat Idiota (The idiot's return). Dostoyevsky's Idiot is one of my favorite books and I half-expected to see yet another masterpiece butchered on the screen. I was surprised to find out that it was not so in the case of this film. Sasa Gedeon's story stays close enough to the book to provide you with a sense of familiarity to the story, and yet strays from the book in many ways, essentially creating a film independent from the book. The resulting movie is sure to please the viewer with its subtlety and its atmosphere.
Throughout the movie, we follow the main character, Frantisek. After many years of psychiatric treatment of some kind, he is released from the hospital because according to his doctor `He has no reason to hide from life anymore'. He travels across Czech Republic to a small town where some distant relatives of his live. Arriving there, the day before New Year's eve, he finds himself in the middle of a weird love square between two brothers and two sisters. When things get awry and secrets that would hurt everyone threaten to come to the surface, Frantisek tries to protect them all, and unknowingly, changes everyone's lives. The climax of the movie during the last minutes of the year is one of the bests I've seen
The actors while unknown to the rest of the world, are essentially the creme de la creme of the new generation of Czech actors, most of them recruited from local theaters. Watching the film it is easy to see that they do not come from TV or cinema circles. There's some great acting in that movie! Pavel Liska is wonderful as the idiot and the rest of the crew is just as good. Special attention must be focused in the chemistry between Frantisek and the younger sister Olga, played beautifully by Tatiana Vilhelmova. The dialogues are refreshing in their simplicity. No wise-ass jokes, no cliche phrases. I think that Sasa Gedeon has done a great job there too. The lines are delivered free of any pretension. It's the everyday talk between friends and lovers. In our days of FX and ultra-high budgets where plot and dialogue play a minor role in the making of films, it was really pleasing to see a film that it's all about plot and dialogue. There are no special effects in this movie, no action scenes, no sex, no comedy that will kill you with laughter. There is definitely lots of humor, but the kind of humor you really need to get before you start laughing. The main character does a lot of things that may appear comical, but the viewer does not know if he has to laugh or cry.
All in all it's a great film and at the end of it, you will leave the cinema with a big smile on your face. I've seen it already three times and still cannot get enough of it. Go rent it if you can find it, or even better go see it in a cinema somewhere. It would make a perfect first date movie.....
