The Seagull

This film version of Chekov's plays is one of those points where this and the other blog cross over a bit. Of the big four Chekov plays, "The Seagull" is probably the one I'm least fond of (the two-years-later jump between act three and four contains a pretty messy exposition dump, the titular Seagull kinda feels like it's bashing you over the head with its obvious symbolism, and it's possibly the most navel-gazing in his canon, given of the main four characters, two are writers - there's no other writers appearing in "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters" or "The Cherry Orchard"), but it still has a lot of stuff that works for me. This version suffers additionally from some clunky translations and some condensing that means Chekov's subtext, where a lot of his strengths lie, ends up not getting room to breathe. You need the sense of a languid summer where people's lives are wasting away, and if you're rushing from plotpoint-to-plotpoint, all that goes way.

Still, there's some strengths in the performancea. Masha's not necessarily the most significant character in the play but Elizabeth Moss nails every moment she has - catching that essential balance between comedy and misery that is so damn Russian. Saroise Ronan, usually so good, is a bit sabotaged by overenthusiatic editing meaning that Nina's less a girl whose uncertainty is going to lead her astray than an over-naive girl who gets more and more bipolar - her final scene, in particular, is a bit of a mess. Annette Bening and Corey Stoll are served better by the edit and hit more of Chekov's essential notes. Billy Howle as the fourth main character, Konstantin, also feels overly simplified by the edit, although Konstantin is a very tough role to get (he's a young writer who's not entirely successful and is the one who has to do a lot of waving that symbolic Seagull around). And the choice to cut the final few lines and just focus on Bening's face means the final story point is a little lost.

I don't know whether Chekov really lives comfortably in film form without major reconception, and I kinda dread this may be used as a simple cliffs-notes to a more complex play, but if this is going to be the only chance we get to see some of these people play these roles.... well, that's not all bad.