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Now here's something you don't see everyday: a movie that opens as if like a documentary, then going right into a cast of characters doing a full rehearsal of a Chekhov play, Uncle Vanya, with only a few little breaks here and there to fully remind the audience "hey, this is still a bunch of 'real' people not even putting on but preparing to put on a play." Vanya on 42nd Street is something of a revelation in translating theater to film, or rather theater AS cinema, or vise-versa. As an audience watching an adaptation of a play we're often used to seeing a play taken from its roots on the stage to film, its realistic recreation presented live to an audience as an event where the spontaneity of life occurs from moment to moment without a break, fleshed out by way of the devices of the cinematic language (lighting, different focal points and shots, editing, music cues).
In the case of Vanya on 42nd Street we're watching a play take shape- at first slightly awkwardly, since I had never read or seen the play performed I wasn't even quite sure when the characters were starting to talk in the Chekhov language out of their own actors-playing characters voices- and we should be drawn in like a usual theater crowd. And we are, or at least I was, thanks to the very powerful and moving performances and the inherent wonders to be found in Chekhov's text. But Louis Malle plays around a little bit, or rather more than just a little bit. Because of the placement of the camera in certain scenes, and as it is a play rehearsed in a decrepit theater on 42nd street, we see an actor here and there in the background watching as a scene which is supposed to be taking place with just two of the characters in play, and something like this small touch creates something else to the process. The process of doing this play, even as a rehearsal, is kind of in the background of how the movie works as a *movie*, not as theater.
If this sounds a little complicated a dissection, it should be noted that Malle, a man who made many films and had this as his final film before he was taken away so suddenly, knows the essential thing is important: put on a great production of a play. And it works, fully: we're sucked into this story of a family in Russia torn apart by their love, or disconnect from it, mistrust, loneliness, bitterness, despair, and moments that ponder the very reason why we even go on living when things look to be the worst (the final speech given by Vanya's daughter played by Brooke Smith, should be considered a mini-masterpiece of the written word with it starting with "All we can do is live."). It's about wasted lives, or chances that have gone by for some, like Wallace Shawn's title character, for over half of a lifetime.
So Chekhov fans, of whom there are quite a few in the theater world, won't be disappointed in the least by the presentation. It's a best-of-both-worlds piece of art; we get the wonderful essentials of what it all comes down to in the world of theater as actors (such as Julianne Moore and Shawn and Smith who are all fantastic, sometimes nearing genius), totally in tune and prepared with this heavy work of intelligently gut-ripping familial drama, are revealed though Malle's careful and sometimes very subtle documentary approach. It's a double edged sword: we're watching a play, yes, but there's something else about watching theater as process, as something that evolves along, that is captured as well, which is something rare (maybe one other film, Bergman's minor but great work, After the Rehearsal, has this quality).
But at the same time, Louis Malle is directing a film that is fictional, and we are forced to still see things a certain way, to see real film lights hitting on what is supposed to be a "realistic" setting, and editing directing our eyes where to go in a big confrontation and with actors and their eyelines and the 180 degree rule and so on. There's even a very tricky moment I wasn't sure at first that I liked: in the second half there's a moment where Moore's character is thinking something to herself, about getting angry, about saying something she feels to Vanya or someone (i.e. the "mermaid" bit). Up until now we've seen these actors relatively in naturalistic conditions in terms of their own audience- the actors' dress rehearsal is being seen by a few guests- but this suddenly takes into consideration narration, and we're reminded it is all really a film.
I'm still not sure if this completely fits, but it's such a bold moment that I respect it all the same. Vanya on 42nd Street is an immensely stimulating experience both as pure drama and as an intellectual rendering of what theater and film represents as art forms. And as a final feature from a director like Malle is a very fine achievement; I'm tempted to say that, even imperfect as it is, it's sort of timeless in its approach to a 19th century Russian play. 9.5/10
score 9/10
Quinoa1984 12 March 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2036575/ |
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9-3-2021 04:52:08