Nina (2004) User Reviews

Raskolnikov draws cartoons in Sao Paulo

[thebucketrider · 6/10 · 17 July 2004]

A farcical, highly abridged adaptation of Dostoevsky's _Crime and Punishment_ set in contemporary Sao Paulo. The protagonist is an underemployed girl who wallpapers her room with the dark, manga-like cartoons she draws. This is perhaps indicative of her introversion, her immersion in a world of fantastic ideas and impressions; when events elicit highly charged reactions, these are rendered as cartoons. The girl's nemesis is her shrewish, niggardly landlady, who is rendered very convincingly detestable (in far more detail than Alena Ivanovna was). How Nina deals with her will come as no surprise to readers of the original novel but here that crime becomes a culmination of the story rather than its centerpiece. The focus, instead, is on the straitened youthful existence that leads up to it. A highlight of the film is Nina's encounter and tryst with a very characterful blind man.

"Nina" is an entertaining affair with none of the religious depth and anxiety of the book it is based on.

Extraordinary Crime and Punishment

[Cineanalyst · 7/10 · 26 September 2019]

I've been viewing a bunch of film adaptations of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" since reading it, and I'll take this odd, loose reworking over several supposedly-faithful cinematic iterations that slavishly attempt to depict key scenes from a novel. For all their devotion to character personalities and story elements, most of these movies miss the most important aspects of a text. In this case, it's not only a tale of murder and redemption and the underlying philosophy and religion, it's also about how those things are fueled by art and fever dreams. "Nina" is slow to start, inconsistent and meanders into seemingly irrelevant detours, but it fundamentally grasps the important parts of Dostoevsky's book.

Dostoevsky's protagonist, Raskolnikov, wrote the murders before he committed them--doing so in an article of his that is published whereby he claims that the exceptional people may rightly disobey laws. It's something of a story-within-a-story: a literary mise-en-abyme. Indeed, the novel is full of this sort of doubling: two murders, two suspected murderers, two dying mothers, two caddish suitors of the sister, two brutal horse-related incidents, Raskolnikov's two lovers, overall character duality, life and afterlife, etc. Thus, Nina, the goth protagonist of a visual art form, draws the murders before she commits them. She does this thrice, for a triptych. The live-action picture changes to basic animation in the style of Nina's drawings for these murder scenes, one with an axe as per the novel and another with a knife, until Nina's suffocating of her landlady with a plastic bag is intercut with live-action and drawings. Even more than in the prose, murder here is visually equated to art.

Some "Crime and Punishment" films do better with the dream imagery, which is also analogous to cinema. None have done so to such a heightened state of delirium as in "Nina," though. One of the biggest missteps here, methinks, is that the picture spends too much time trying to sympathize with her instability as the result of her being a supposed victim because she doesn't simply get what she wants for free. She is an unlikable character, as others have criticized, but if you think she's irredeemable, I wouldn't recommend Raskolnikov. Nevertheless, It would've been more interesting had the picture focused on what I would've assumed to be her drug intoxication. After all, Guta Stresser, as Nina, looks like someone strung out--and not merely from smoking a marijuana joint and dancing to techno music. Regardless, this is one of the few adaptations I've seen to feature the childhood nightmare of a horse being beaten, which is in the novel. The Kazakhstani version, "Student" (2012), references it, and the 2000 animated short from Poland briefly shows it, but it's not an integral part of either narrative as it is here and as it was for Dostoevsky. As with Nina's drawings, her dreams are in black-and-white, too. Moreover, this dream points to the origins of Raskolnikov and Nina's philosophy of their own superiority--despite this belief, unfortunately, only being glossed over here in the opening scene.

There are a few other little moments that demonstrate a striking familiarity with the source prose. Both protagonists receive letters from their mothers. Indeed, the movie extrapolates from the similar problems that Raskolnikov had with paying rent. Nina has a friend who's a prostitute, like Raskolnikov's Sonya. She abuses a blind person, like Svidrigaïlov is accused to have done. She aids a woman who is being pursued by a potential abuser, as did Raskolnikov. When she goes to kill her landlady, she passes by painters in another apartment, which Raskolnikov also did on his way to the pawnbroker. A man knocks on the door after the murder in both stories. Another man inquired about both of them, and the one here does everything but call out Nina as a "murderer." And like Dostoevsky's protagonist, Nina becomes increasingly tormented as she feels the police closing in on her.

From there, "Nina" diverges considerably, as the picture increasingly reflects her unstable grasp on reality. This includes a spiral shot down a staircase after a montage of stair stepping, which reminds one of "Vertigo" (1958). I probably would've rated this even higher had it concluded with the dream that led to Raskolnikov's regeneration, but there's no conversion for Nina. She's a lost soul, from beginning to end. To be fair, however, Raskolnikov doesn't actually reform in any of the movie adaptations. Most end with his confession, but it's in the epilogue nightmare that he conclusively abandons his former philosophy of superiority. Only a couple versions even include any of the epilogue and never the dream. It's unfortunate for a story about the dichotomy between the extraordinary and the ordinary that so many of the movies should be ordinary. At least, "Nina" is not ordinary.

Very impressive and entertaining

[federovsky · 25 January 2005]

Vague spoilers.

This is a beautifully executed film. Many of us – particularly students - will recognise the grungy hard-up existence of Nina, and it's all here: the noir apartment, the landlady from hell, the sense of aimlessness, the claustrophobia of poverty.

Nina is artistic but doesn't care much for society. She is looking for a way to express herself through her drawings, but having thrown up her job in a burger restaurant, is impoverished to the point of eating cat food. She meets a blind man who she plays around with and then blithely robs because she sees herself as more needy than he is. She then proceeds to give money to a drunken whore who is thrown out of a cab. Prostitution is a looming but unwelcome option for Nina and she can sympathise with the woman's desperate condition.

Back at the flat, Nina's landlady, a fascinating, bitter, twisted old stick of a woman, delights in petty acts of persecution. This performance is masterly in making us hate her more by her mannerism than her vindictive actions (which are not entirely unreasonable considering that Nina owes her rent). Nina becomes increasingly neurotic and desperate and we begin to delve into her mental world, very effectively aided by the use of her own drawings. The black and white drawings and rudimentary animations are themselves deeply fascinating.

After Nina reaches snapping point, a series of surreal events follow reflecting her anguish and mental tension. This is where the film draws most on Dostoyevsky's novel (should we be inclined to make the connection). There are a couple of particularly brilliant moments: the would-be tenant who starts barking outside the door, and the two mysterious men fighting silently in the corridor who, in a quite stunning unexpected twist, turn out to be merely playing.

Really great cinema.

Is there a novel in the house?

[arisheinwald · 3/10 · 29 August 2004]

Re-working Raskolnikov as a listless but poor goth girl/would-be comic book artist in Sao Paolo, Brazil may have been an ingenious idea. Maybe it would have worked as a farce or a dark comedy. But setting up the expectations of a contemporary reworking of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, NINA shows little understanding of the source material. It's an attempt at a radical reinterpretation that completely misses out on what made Dostoevsky's novel so brilliant. In the novel, the crime is deliberately planned out, committed without remorse. The punishment comes later. Here, it's a crime committed in the heat of the moment where the after-effects are an immediate loss of sanity. It's not simply that the film lacks the psychological depth of the Dostoyevski novel - that would be like complaining that a pond is shallow compared to an ocean - but that we are directed to feel sympathy for Nina. But why should we? We are not given any reason to other than images of her eating cat food. As a portrait of the difficulties facing Brazilian youth, the film serves as its own worst enemy since, in the case of its protagonist, it makes the difficulties appear to be self-imposed. Director Heitor Dhalia also wants to have it both ways - Nina steals from a blind man but then she gives part of her loot to a woman who's been violently thrown out of a cab for not having the money to pay for the ride. And I have nothing wrong with unlikeable protagonists (they can make for compelling films) but that the film attempts to elicit feelings of sympathy for her while not giving us any reason to. As a "descent into the mind of someone losing their mind", the film lacks the urban suffocation of the masterpiece of the genre, Roman Polanski's REPULSION. Attempts at creepy atmospherics feel forced (a product of the sound design/cinematography) and lacking any emotional depth or resonance.

By far, the highlight of the film is Myrian Muniz as the landlady from hell who plays the part with repulsive perfection (her evil wench is reminiscent of Anne Ramsey of THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN and THE GOONIES fame).

Misguided

[asphodelfilms · 3/10 · 3 August 2004]

This film really hooked me at the beginning. It was beautifully shot with a great sound design. It quickly captured a wonderful dark seedy world brimming with surreal, grotesque characters. Unfortunately, it didn't have much for these

characters to do and the film quickly slid downhill. While the actress who played Nina was strong, the character was not somebody you wanted to spend time

with, particularly after a very cruel trick she plays on a blind man. She makes no attempt to solve any of the problems she has created for herself and the last act of the movie, where we are forced to delve into her madness, was tiresome and irritating. I think the director could be capable of great things given a strong script because the vision behind it was really intriguing. But Nina is not the sort of person you want to spend an hour and a half in the dark with.