Word: oblomov
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Dark Eyes illustrates Romano's saga with colorful acting and superb cinematography. Like Mikhalkov's earlier Oblomov, Dark Eyes is set in an era of decadence. It is fun to see the fancy balls, elaborate spas, mansions and frills that are all part of the scene. Mikhalkov's characters move about in this effusively elegant world with a naturalness which most films about the turn-of-the-century fail to capture. But with its shift from one setting to another, the film almost has the feel of a pictorial travelogue...
Alas for his peace and quiet, he has a boyhood chum named Stoltz, a hustler determined to remobilize his old pal. He personally dices vegetables in order to provide Oblomov with an energizing diet...
...brings the slugabed books and periodicals to force him to take an interest in the world. Stoltz even finds a woman who falls in love with Oblomov-and why not? He's so much sweeter and gentler than his tirelessly activist friend; and, as seen in the permanently puzzled eyes of Oleg Tabakov, Oblomov's ennui has a strange integrity. In his way, Tabakov is as mysteriously compelling as Garbo...
There is more at stake here than simple laziness. The adaptation makes much of the childish contentment Oblomov found at his doting mother's knee. As the film intercuts the adult story with the dozing country milieu of the boy's intense but innocent love, one comes to understand that Oblomov's objections to modernism are principled. Once he actually knew a better world that he cannot help trying to reembrace...
There are few big laughs in Oblomov, but it has something of the sotto voce subversiveness that Director Nikita Mikhalkov brought to A Slave of Love, his study of early Russian film makers. He knows how to generate moral and intellectual tension in unlikely places, how to speak for individuality in a place where it is not highly valued. In short, he is an artist-and a fine one. -By Richard Schickel