Word: vanya
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ASTROV, the most enlightened character in Uncle Vanya queries: "Will those who live 100-200 years from now remember us with a kind word...
...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;" and Dr. Astrov, who despite his intelligence and energy will sink--with the help of the vodka bottle--into Vanya's vulgarity and hopelessness after another 10 years...
...THAT the movie is uniformly gray. Chekhov intended his plays to be comedy of a sort, and the comic moments are not lost in the film. Vanya's senile mother reads her pamphlets on the emancipation of women and smokes cigarettes (which seems to encompass her idea of emancipation). Astrov gives a stirring rendition of the weather report when Vanya interrupts his seduction of Irina--an example of the Chekhovian principle that the words we exchange in conversation don't mean a damn thing. And Vanya, the prototype useless intellectual, constantly brings a smile of recognition with his temper tantrums...
Paul Scofield is a precision instrument. His performances are full of small gestures, asides and intuitions that are subtle, telling, always right. He is the master of inflection and implication if not, perhaps, of epic passion, which is why a Scofield Uncle Vanya is more successful than a Scofield Lear...
...expect that the Swedish government's shabby treatment of a great literary figure will go unprotested by its own citizens: there is no Solzhenitsyn in Sweden. VANYA AVELINO Manila...