ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
“There is an idea in suffering,” the inspector says
in Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment to
the student Raskolnikov, suspect in a murder investigation,
whose life, just like that of most people in
Russia during those times, is filled with disproportionate
suffering under inhuman conditions. And
thus, Raskolnikov becomes enraptured by the idea
of an experiment proving to himself that he is a
“human being” and not a “louse”, meaning: that he
is more than the miserable material of history like
everybody else. However, of all things, his proof of
his human dignity is the murder of a pawn-broker,
and so in this, probably the most famous mystery
in world literature, Dostoyevsky describes Raskolnikov's
transformation from a student to a murderer
and believer. “Mercy,” as Heiner Müller once wrote
about this novel, “is an allegation that may never
be realizable.”