Onegin

This is a very good film overall. Having grown up in Russia and being, as we would say here, `a great Pushkin's fan' ;-), I was caught between curiosity and caution when deciding whether I should even rent this film. Then I saw Ralph Fiennes name and thought that it could not be all that bad.so curiosity won. I was pleasantly surprised that the film is fairly faithful to the original. Not completely, of course, but when I think about horrible mutilations other filmmakers perform on marvelous works of literature, I'm very grateful that the producers of `Onegin' read the poem very well and chose scenes and changed some of them with care. I won't talk a lot about beauty of scenes in the film: it's a pleasure to watch. Here are some of the things I didn't like. First of all I was a little disappointed by the film's interiors. Several of them look very natural (some of the room's in Larin's and Onegin's houses). Others (like Petersburg palaces) more than anything resemble theatrical decorations. I don't think this was intentional, since the overall scenery is very realistic. Another objection is the lovemaking scene. I don't think it belongs or was needed at all. Was it just a due paid to modern filmmaking? Why not do Tatyana's dream instead (this is a meaningful symbolic scene in the poem, not filming it could hardly be an accidental decision, I would love to know what was the reason)? The third, kind of big problem is that married Tatyana is not clearly portrayed as the queen of Petersburg's society. This detail is very important for understanding of Onegin's character: a tragic figure who can only exist within the laws and decorations of high society - the very society he despises more than anything else. Tatyana, the queen of this society, a complete part of it and yet completely not involved with it, comfortably within and yet far above the chattering crowd - that very likely is the only thing Onegin can love. Unfortunately the question `am I noble enough for you now?' which Tatyana throws at Onegin during the climax scene of the film, does not fully convey that understanding and is an oversimplification compared to the speech that Pushkin's Tatyana gives to her fallen and still loved hero.

Any film that opens with a carriage on runners being pulled through the snow has got to try really hard to fail. My wife and I spent the whole of this film entranced by the scenery, the exquisitely detailed sets and costumes, superb performances by all of the cast with a refreshingly thoughtful and adult dialogue and several surprising twists in the story. Liv Tyler delivered the most sensual performance I have seen in a film for quite a few years proving that you don't have to be naked and sweaty to stimulate an audience! I have not read the original story but I think this film may do for russian novelists what the recent spate of period dramas have done for Shakespeare and Jane Austen. The pacing of the film is slow and salubrious but definitely not plodding (sic. Angela's Ashes) You will be left wanting more but any more would spoil the plot. Don't miss it. Full marks.

Russians consider Pushkin's "Evgenii Onegin" one of the peaks of their literature, but to British drama actors/directors/composers Fiennes the work remained just a curiosity which could be easily brought to screen for a nice, and unambitious family project. Where Russian readers and western students of Russian culture see a vision of the decadence of Russian aristocracy, and a condemnation of the Ancien Regime, both in social, and cultural terms, the Fiennes saw a nice romantic interlude. The limited scope of the filmmakers'interest explains why the movie is successful in just one aspect - the two love scenes between Onegin and Larina are great, actually much better than what Russian actors would perform in the place of Fiennes and Tyler. But that's that. Everything else, including the duel, or the scandal between Lensky and Onegin, is dull, insipid and rather un-Russian. Fiennes obviously misunderstood the meaning of being "tired of life". Pushkin's Onegin was not a self-centered, self-sufficient and utterly satisfied English gentleman who speaks patronizingly to everyone in the country because "he knows things". He was a model for generations of Russian "malcontents": in a rigidly conservative society playing the "tired of life" was a social stand, not a psychological state. Onegin was a passionate man and his aloofness was a deliberate pretense (not that much different from Hamlet's delusive craziness). In short, the Fienneses had better screen a romantic drama without referring to Pushkin's masterpiece. Their movie is nice, watchable and enjoyable (well, Liv Tyler stars in it!), but their rendition of Pushkin's characters is so dissatisfying, the great poet might easily take offense.

I was impressed so much by Onegin. Ralph Fiennes made me change my opinion about Onegin as person. When I read Onegin (at school) I could not pardon him for all the Tatiana's suffering, in my mind he was a devil, cynique and even cruel. In Ralph's performance I saw all the mystery of this person (Ralphs mystery...). in his eyes - parfois si impenetrables, si indifferents, soudain l'amour qui luit, la lumiere douce, un regard abandonne: Ralphs smile. Now when I think of Onegin I see Fiennes - a man in black bolivar, walking alone on Moika's embankment, tender and blessed heart behind cold eyes.

Fine performances highlight `Onegin,' a generally interesting version of Pushkin's complex love story whose contemporary significance shines through the tortured souls of its two main characters. Ralph Fiennes stars in the title role as a 19th Century Russian aristocrat who, like many similar figures in Russian literature of that time, suffers from the attenuating effects of enervation and ennui. Though the recipient of vast sums of wealth and property at the death of his uncle, Onegin finds no meaning or solace in life as he lives it. He is as bored by the stifling superficiality of the privileged elite languishing in splendor in the fancy halls and glittering ballrooms of cosmopolitan St. Petersburg as he is by the domestic dreariness of the provincials residing in the bucolic countryside where one of his uncle's vast estates is located. In the latter setting, while visiting Vladimir - a poet he has recently befriended - Onegin becomes drawn to Tatyana the beautiful younger sister of the man's fiancé. Both Onegin and Tatyana reflect a remarkably modern sensibility in their temperaments. For instance, though the attraction between the two is a mutual one, it is Tatyana who makes the first move, pouring out her unbridled love for this newcomer in a letter which Onegin politely rejects because he fears the deadening of the soul that he believes will inevitably accompany marriage and fidelity. One can't get much more contemporary in tone than these two characters, one stepping well out of the accustomed bounds accorded her sex in affairs of romance and the other reflecting the fear of commitment that is such a staple of modern times. Yet, fate plays its cruelest hand at the end, as Onegin finds himself, years later, trapped in an ironic role reversal as the now-married Tatyana is forced to rebuff the advances of the obsessed, lovelorn man whom she still admits to loving. As in many bleak works of Russian literature, the character is forced to live out his existence in a hell of his own making, suffering the torment of regret without end.

The personal drama unfolds against the fascinating backdrop of the subtly changing society of 19th Century Russia, a country that, then and now, has seemed to be always several centuries behind its European neighbors in its moves towards liberalization in the areas of basic human and civil rights. We see clearly the struggle between the empty ritualism and entrenched barbarism of the past, as reflected in the continuing institution of serfdom and in gun duels fought over affairs of honor, and the enlightened philosophy of the coming world, as many young aristocrats begin to champion both the abolition of serfdom and the growing acceptance of love as the foundation of marriage. Indeed, the two young lovers cannot extricate themselves from the entanglements that often accompany a time unsure of its traditions. Onegin, for all his talk about freeing his serfs, is himself forced to participate in a duel that both horrifies and disgusts him. And Tatyana, for all her comments about only marrying a man she loves, succumbs to the pressure of tradition, ultimately agreeing to a marriage based on class, money and position. Here are two people caught in a world not yet ready for them, who are forced to settle for the compromises their society has deemed fit and proper.

This well-acted, well-written and well-directed film may seem a bit slow at times, but the intelligence of the dialogue, the subtle underplaying of the cast and the quiet beauty of much of the direction lead us into a strange world of the past that still has resonance and relevance for the world of today.