Sibling auteurs Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo deliver a gritty yet stylish masterpiece with Dostoevskij, seamlessly blending suspenseful storytelling, breathtaking cinematography, and raw emotion, setting a new standard for contemporary TV thrillers.
Four years after winning a Silver Bear for their screenplay Bad Tales, the D’Innocenzo brothers – Fabio and Damiano – were back at Berlinale, presenting their first ever foray into the world of the cinematic series. Dostoevskij is being aired on Sky Italia as a six parter, but was screened in two parts over the course of one nail biting evening for those lucky enough to be in Kino International for the series’ world premiere.
Set in the hinterlands of Rome, we follow Enzo Vitello (Filippo Timi), a morally ambiguous, deeply troubled detective as he leads an investigative team in the hunt for a serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevskij. This moniker is used by the police in reference to the macabre letters which the killer leaves beside each of their victims, describing in gruesome, sordid detail the tortured final moments of each of the deceased. As Vitello attempts to track Dostoevskij down, a chilling relationship develops between detective and criminal which weighs heavily on Vitello’s already disturbed psyche and warped mind. Vitello is a man struggling to fight on many fronts; with his daughter, the rest of his team, against the killer, and perhaps most of all, with himself.
Carlotta Gamba plays Vitello’s daughter, Ambra, a psychologically scarred drug addict who was abandoned by her father as a child. In the relationship’s oscillations between raw intimacy, intense vulnerability and violent abuse, the father/daughter scenes manage to touch a nerve which is even more harrowing than the deranged serial killings. The portrayal of the edge and depth of human emotion and spirit give this otherwise entirely grim series a beating heart, keeping you completely hooked for the full five hours.
An incredible soundtrack (Matteo Wall), fantastic editing (Walter Fasano) and masterful cinematography (Matteo Cocco) manage to sustain a brilliant, slow-burning tension, complimenting beautifully the truly stunning performance of Filippo Timi. The directors apparently considered Timi for the role through the writing process, and on the relationship between character and place, stated, “We wanted his (Timi’s) whole body to be as craggy and bare as the landscape in which the show is set.”
The D’Innocenzo brothers’ trademark portrayal of their home country as more Scandi-noir than Call Me By Your Name rings true just as much for the Dostoevskij series as for any of their films – although they can’t seem to help but bring a certain stylishness to their gritty productions. In initial talks with Sky Italia, “We just asked them what genre they wanted and they said: ‘a thriller,’” recounts Fabio, and then “in half an hour we wrote the core of Dostoevskij on a page. Obviously, writing the screenplay was much more complicated.” The freedom and trust that Sky apparently gave the directors was clearly well placed, with Dostoevskij set to be named alongside award winning dramas like True Detective in conversations concerning truly brilliant contemporary TV series.
During the interval, outside the cinema, people were discussing the place in contemporary viewing culture of the cinematic series. Although we watched the entire series in one night, the experience felt far closer to viewing an – admittedly very long – art house film, rather than anything close to ‘binge-watching’. Experiencing the series on the big screen brought a well deserved focus on the magnificent expansiveness of Dostoevskij, giving a heightened attention and gravitas to the viewing experience. A number of festivals recently have been giving space in their programmes for series to be screened in this manner, and I for one hope this continues.
I’ll leave the final words of this review to the D’Innocenzo brothers, both published poets.
“Dostoevskij is the story of a man, a police officer, a ghost, a winter, a daughter, a friend, the end of a friend, a river, an assassin, a glistening fish, a broken hand, an abandoned daughter, a colonoscopy, a battery charger, a more esteemed colleague, an orphan, an orphanage, a pregnancy, a lost daughter, a younger colleague, an eye washed in a sink, an illness… the decisive battle among all of these elements in the world.” If that doesn’t pique your curiosity, I don’t know what will.
