Normally, I content myself with merely reading the reviews on IMDB after I've watched a movie or a television series: sampling both the most positive and the most negative. However, when no reviews as yet exist, I compel myself to comment.
Having recently read this masterpiece for the first time, I was astonished that no movie versions of it seem to exist. There are movies called 'Dead Souls', but they seem to have no connection with Gogol's work. The only production I was able to find was this 1984 Soviet made-for-television mini-series. It was exceptional, but for one absolutely horrible fault.
The acting, the screenplay, the costumes and locations used for filming: all fitted Gogol's masterfully funny, sympathetic, satiric and sad commentary on provincial life in Russia in the early eighteenth century. Truly, a marvellous rendition.
That they only dealt with the first part of the novel is understandable: Gogol himself burned much of its second part, and the real story is involved in the first part, with his 'hero' visiting the provincial nobility to purchase the serfs (termed 'souls') who have died: all part of his get-rich-quick scheme, one aspect of his ongoing and delightfully convoluted activities as a charmingly attractive con man.
Using Gogol himself as a character (as was masterfully done to a smaller extent in the mini series on Tom Jones from 1997, in which Henry Fielding appears at the beginning of each episode) was a brilliant move: the actor was even got up to look just like the most celebrated portrait of the author. In the book, Gogol is always intruding upon his reader to explain himself, to apologize, or to draw generalisations about his cherished Russia and its people whom he loved so much. Thus, these intrusions were as welcome as they were justified.
The drawback, which kept my score for this series down to an '8' ,were the atrocious subtitles. A much clearer rendition of what Gogol and his characters were actually saying would have been much preferred, and had I not just finished reading the novel, I doubt I would have got even half the meanings which they these butchered subs so haphazardly tried to present.
Highly recommended. Available on a website called 'RussianHubs', but try to find better subtitles should you choose to check out this outstanding series.
