Word: chekhovs
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Judging from the new Soviet film version of the Chekhov play, the answer is an emphatic yes. Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky has directed a delicate, moving rendition that successfully toes the line between full identification and bemused contempt, compassion for the characters and pity, that Chekhov is famous...
...first long shot of the old country house--with its peeling paint, creaking doors and evanescent charm. Even the interjection of pictures of denuded forest lands and starving children are in context. They portray the stark contrasts between the idle gentry and the destitute peasantry which underly Chekhov's sense of a passing...
...that Chekhov or his characters can foresee how their social reality will change. Astrov (with Chekhov's intuition) is alone in recognizing that it must change. For the others, such problems "are not boring, they're simply beyond me," as the beautiful Yelena remarks at one point...
Happily, such vision is not demanded of them. Politics is a side issue, both for Chekhov and in the film. With or without Russian historical background, we are drawn in by the lives of these people: the self-centered professor, who has been writing about art for 25 years "without knowing anything about art:" Yelena, his completely provocative and utterly directionless young wife: Sonya, his fresh, intelligent young daughter, stuck in the country for the rest of her days; Vanya himself, who could have been "a Dostoevsky or a Schopenhauer" if not for 25 years of "stupid, dirty provincial life...
...country, leaving them to cook for themselves in the city Monday through Friday and commute to the dacha on weekends, carrying supplies-a situation familiar to many urban American husbands. The role of dachas in Russian life is by no means new to the Soviet era. Anton Chekhov wrote a short story about a dachny muzh who made the best of his citybound work week by taking a mistress in the summer while his wife was at the dacha...