It’s worthwhile spending a little time with the Karamazovs, those four brothers and the old man, whom you can meet with an admission ticket to Czech writer/ director Petr Zelenka’s movie adaptation.  From one of  the “Great Books” of western literature, his rich take on Dostoevsky’s  “The Brothers Karamazov” concentrates on the last chapters of the novel, the trial of dissolute brother Dmitri over the murder of his profligate father, with the other feuding brothers (religious,Alyosha, atheistic Ivan, and sniveling Smerdyakov) also testifying. Who really did  him in and why?  Set in a huge,nearly-deserted Stalin-era steel mill in Poland, a theater troupe has come to present the spiritual drama as a play due for a stage festival (originally written by Czech “new wave” director Evald Schorm during the late resistance years to Communism). The expert cast, from Prague’s Dejvice Theater, with the acclaimed Ivan Trojan as the father, manage to richly execute Dostoevsky’s timeless questions about moral responsibility and free will as they go through rehearsals  in this thrilling but demanding film. From the director of Wrong Side Up, The Buttoners (a longtime MStPFF favorite), Czech Oscar nominee, 2009.

(In Czech; English subtitles).