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THURSDAY, MAY 24 - 30, 2018
life
PAGE 11B
MOVIEREVIEW
The Seagull a lively but uneven Chekhov adaptation
BY JAKE COYLE
(AP) Productions of
Anton Chekhovs The
Seagull almost always tip
too far into farce or wade
too deeply into tragedy,
unable to sustain the play’s
elusive balancing act.
Michael Mayers lush and
lively big-screen adaption is
unfortunately no exception.
On the plus side, Mayer,
a veteran theater director,
has if anything leaned more
into the comic nature of The
Seagull. Chekhov whose play
was first performed in 1896,
did indeed call it a comedy.
That makes this Seagull a
kind of flipside to Sidney
Lumet’s dull and sluggish
1968 version, essentially
the only other significant
film adaptation of one of
Chekhov’s most beloved
works.
Working from a script
by Stephen Karam,
Mayer seems eager to
swing entirely in the other
direction—perhaps too
eager. His Seagull, the
director’s third feature
film (Flicka, A Home at the
End of the World), shrinks
some of the play’s dialogue,
robbing it of its rhythm,
while never resting his ever-
moving camera nor quieting
its ever-stirring score. For a
distinctly Russian play, he’s
made a notably American
film, pleasantly unstuffy
(there are no forced accents
here and the language is
more colloquial) but also
less substantial and lacking
the tenor of Chekhov’s
music.
The Seagull is set
around the Treplev family
estate (a glorious lakeside
upstate New York mansion
doubles for rural Russia)
where Irina Arkadina
(Annette Bening) has
come to visit her brother,
Sorin (Brian Dennehy),
and her brooding aspiring
playwright son, Konstantin
(Billy Howie). Irina is an
aging actress of the Moscow
stage and she brings along
her lover, the celebrated
writer Boris Trigorin (Corey
Stoll), whose presence in the
provincial household begets
numerous anxieties.
Trigorin’s success is the
envy of Konstantin, who
soon finds his sweetheart,
Nina Zarechnaya (Saoirse
Ronan), is lured by
the preying Trigorin.
Unrequited love runs
rampart in The Seagull. (It
also afflicts Elisabeth Moss’
Masha). Characters, many
of them knowingly, are
the helpless victims of the
fluctuations of their self-
defeating heart—especially
when mixed with potentially
misguided artistic
ambitions.
It’s a talented cast but the
only one at home in their
role is Bening, who has
recently, as Gloria Grahame
in Film Stars Don’t Die
in Liverpool and in Being
Julia, proven exceptional
at portraying the waning
glamour and growing
distress of divas late in life.
She’s funny and broken at
once, perfectly poised in
that Chekhovian limbo.
The Seagull, a Sony
Pictures Classics release, is
rated PG-13 by the Motion
Picture Association of
America for “some mature
thematic elements, a scene
of violence, drug use, and
partial nudity.” Running
time: 98 minutes. Two stars
out of four.
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