The Cherry Orchard

I have to say I hated this movie. I don't like to say that because Gerard Butler is in it. About a half an hour of boring conversation, sorry to all who actually care about the plot, I started fast-forwarding to Gerry's scenes. I really don't know the ending, I was that bored with it. If Gerry wasn't in it, I probably either done one of two things: fell asleep or turned it off, but Gerry is the bright light of this movie, as he is with most of his earlier movies. If you're a fan of Gerry's don't worry, he's as adorable and precious as he always is, but if you actually want to watch the movie for the plot, good luck because you'll need it, either that or lots of coffee or soda to keep you awake!

4/10...and that's just because the casting director had the sense to put Gerry in this movie, even though they had no idea of how to spell his name!

People leave rooms, enter rooms. Peep through windows. Hide behind doors. Everyone behaves as if they've just lost their best friend. It's all so melodramatic. There's a piano score by Tchaikovsky that plays relentlessly on the soundtrack so as to cue us to the perpetual state of melancholy. A real cheerless meandering stagey bore of a movie. Charlotte Rampling tries hard and Alan Bates looks like he wandered in from another movie.

Michael Cacoyannis seems strangely reluctant to tell this story in a straightforward, understandable fashion. This ridiculously edited film rates a 7 out of 10 only because it does, in its idiosyncratic way, convey something of the story of a Russian woman, of the landed gentry, fallen on hard times, who is desperately seeking to preserve the ownership of her estate, on which is an ancient and beloved cherry orchard. If she is forced to sell, the orchard will be cut down and the estate "developed" into "affordable housing". So what else is new, eh?

By all, this is the choppiest editing and directing style I have ever encountered. Chekhov's play is certainly not constructed this way. There is no effort to introduce characters in an orderly fashion so that one may get to know who they are, and what their relationships and motivations are. Some of this eventually emerges if you are patient and alert enough, but don't blink! Some of the cast work is excellent. They must have been frustrated, though, if they knew what kind of editing would appear in the final cut.

Chekhov's plays have generally resisted film and TV adaptations: Sidney Lumet's "Sea Gull" was lumpy and not well cast, and even the Russian film adaptations have been turgid affairs.

Michael Cacoyannis' version of "The Cherry Orchard" (originally titled "Varya" after one of the main characters), is better than Lumet's film largely because it's better acted in general. But the direction is sometimes fussy, sometimes leaden - the pacing becomes more and more turgid as the film progresses. The final 40 minutes or so become very tedious. Plus there's an unnecessary prologue in Paris - an obvious attempt to open up the play, but it goes on much too long.

Charlotte Rampling does very well as Madame Ranyevskaya, a near-penniless aristocrat who returns to her family estate as it is about to be auctioned after a default on the mortgage. Rampling clearly shows us a aging woman who is spoiled, charming, childish, delusional, sometimes haughty and condescending, and feckless - a person who never learned how to manage money because she never felt she had to. Her performance makes this woman less conventionally sympathetic than others in the role - which is fine. There are times when her performance is undercut by some jarring editing where her mood swings from one extreme to another.

The rest of the cast is quite fine: Alan Bates as Ranyevskaya's equally feckless and lazy brother Gayev shows us the man who knows full well his coming fate, yet goes through fits of denial to coddle his sister and the others; Michael Gough as the increasingly senile family servant Fiers; Tushka Bergen as Ranyevskaya's daughter Anya.

The best acting comes from Katrin Cartlidge as the hapless, lovesick, foster daughter Varya, a soul sister to Sonia of Uncle Vanya; and Owen Teale (who was superb with Janet McTeer onstage in "A Doll's House") as Lopahin, a former peasant whose family worked on Ranyevskaya's farm but who has now become a successful businessman. His efforts to convince the fading aristocrats to save themselves by selling the estate fall on deaf ears, so he decides on a different plan of action.

I would recommend seeing this only to people who are familiar with the play. First-timers would be better off seeking out a good stage production (lots of luck there) as Chekhov has always worked better there.

How should one live? This is the fundamental question in most of Chekhov's works. Here it's openly exposed and discussed. Should the declining aristocratic family attach themselves to the possession of their cherry orchard (a symbolic representative of the grand ornaments of the Russian aristocracy) or should they give in to modern commercialization in order to survive? What is the value of tradition and how many trees should each one os us have? Chekhov does not answer. But he formulates the questions in the most fascinating way. In addition to scholarly speeches about such fundamental dilemmas, the author also takes pleasure in a witty verve, offering us a 'veduta' of high culture and life in style in 19th century Russia. But, as the critic Pierce Inverarity summed up, this is not just a typical nineteenth-century play; its potential topics, questions and answers are relevant to any individual dealing with society and history, anywhere and anytime. However, as universal and moving as it can be on stage, Chekhov's play isn't the stuff of a great movie -- there's simply nothing filmic about it.