Onegin

Rating:
Summary: A superb feature debut from Martha Fiennes.
Review: 'Onegin' is just one the continuing prolific offerings from the Fiennes family. This time it is sister Martha who basks in the glory with her feature debut.

Ralph's performance as Onegin is also superb and is entirely suited to it given his recent detached torn-lover roles (Count Laszlo Almasy, Maurice Bendrix etc). Onegin is a bored socialite who has much disdain for the social ongoings of Petersburg. It is not until he goes to the countryside to visit his dying uncle that he becomes interested in a local young girl. Liv Tyler, the object of beauty, also delivers a more than fine performance. Her character resists much of a typical middle-class woman's etiquette -and wished to marry for love's sake rather than for connections.

I don't want to give too much of the plot away since it is paper thin to begin with. I've never really understood the lack of forgiveness for thin plots as a deliberate device and having said that there are other cinematic elements used to sustain the viewers attention. The cinematography is breathtaking as the film's lyrical mood is visually conveyed through well articulated framing. Add to the sombre tones, the fluidity of slow movement and gesture and the end result is an intensity that continues to grow.

This film is not destined to be considered a classic nor as a sweeping epic - however it certainly is fine viewing on a quiet Sunday evening.

Rating:
Summary: A Fienne Film
Review: A lush, truly "artistic" film - dark, subtle yet complex, haunting.
The acting is subtle, and much of the emotion is expressed in looks. Liv Tyler does a more than decent job in her role as an innocent, naive Tatyana. She conquers her British accent well, and her final scene makes up for any lack (of feeling, acting, emotion) one might have felt during the rest of the movie. Ralph Fiennes is in his element as brooding, aloof, bored rich aristocrat. The musical score is hauntingly beautiful and original, yet strange and foreign, and proves that the Fiennes family is talented through and through.
But, don't expect a happy ending - this IS a Russian work, after all!
Having only seen the Tchaikovsky opera, and only having read snippets of the novel, I was more than pleased with this treatment, and feel that this film is a worthy adaptation of Pushkin's work.
I want more films like these, if Martha Fiennes is willing to make them.
A worthy viewing. Very rich.

Rating:
Summary: A Fienne Film
Review: A lush, truly "artistic" film - dark, subtle yet complex, haunting.
The acting is subtle, and much of the emotion is expressed in looks. Liv Tyler does a more than decent job in her role as an innocent, naive Tatyana. She conquers her British accent well, and her final scene makes up for any lack (of feeling, acting, emotion) one might have felt during the rest of the movie. Ralph Fiennes is in his element as brooding, aloof, bored rich aristocrat. The musical score is hauntingly beautiful and original, yet strange and foreign, and proves that the Fiennes family is talented through and through.
But, don't expect a happy ending - this IS a Russian work, after all!
Having only seen the Tchaikovsky opera, and only having read snippets of the novel, I was more than pleased with this treatment, and feel that this film is a worthy adaptation of Pushkin's work.
I want more films like these, if Martha Fiennes is willing to make them.
A worthy viewing. Very rich.

Rating:
Summary: Not actively terrible, but...
Review: Alas, Onegin could have been a masterpiece, but instead is rather mediocre. Two gorgeous people carry the movie, and visually it is a charmer (although it owes much of its look to Dr. Zhivago). But where Onegin fails is in pacing and in making us feel the characters' motivation. Why is it that Onegin himself, once a somewhat noble but disaffected rogue, becomes a simpering wretch over a girl (Tatyana, played by Liv Tyler) he once discarded quite casually? Why is it that he discards her in the first place? What happens to him over his six years of wandering that changes him so drastically? His wandering isn't apparently a time of great suffering, but only when he spies Tatyana again does he change character quite suddenly. It's not even that she can't be had--he doesn't realise she's married at first. And when, in the movie, she asks him why he's changed, he says, "I don't know! I can't explain it!"

Well, sigh...perhaps six years from now I'll write another review of this movie praising it to the skies, but for now, it's in my reject pile. There are some good moments, particularly the duel, (and some nice foreshadowing when Onegin first meets Lensky) but not enough to redeem the whole. The slow pace of the film doesn't manage to create tension, but instead results in tedium. Get it if you want to see Ralph Fiennes and Liv Tyler (fully dressed), forget it if you want a gripping romantic tragedy.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet home, Russia!
Review: Although I have to say this is a typical example of Hollywood massacring classic literature, it is a good prose-style movie version of Pushkin's classic poem. Granted, lusty banya scenes never entered into the original poem, but there are a great many details that other movie-makers may have hacked that were left in, and handled well. Also, the cinematography is wonderful, and causes great longings in me to return to sweet home St. Petersburg. I recommend it to anyone with a soft-spot for Russia or Pushkin.

Rating:
Summary: I was detached instead of being swept up in the passion
Review: Based on the 19th century Russian novel by Pushkin, this 1999 film tries hard to bring the passion of the novel to the scene. The result, however, is a lukewarm retelling of a story that, at its heart, should have captivated me from the beginning.

Ralph Fiennes starts as Eugene Onegin, a cad of an aristocrat. We first see him in St. Petersburg gambling away his own inheritance and living a high life. Then word comes that his uncle, who lives in the country, is dying. Onegin makes it there on time to watch the coffin being nailed shut. When the will is read, we learn that Onegin has inherited the vast land holdings, including hundreds of serfs and the splendid estate where he can live in luxury. Onegin is bored and unfeeling and even suggests renting the land to the serfs just because he doesn't want to bother with the responsibilities of being a landlord.

Toby Stevens is cast as his neighbor, Vladmir, a sensitive young man who writes poetry and is madly in love with his fiancé named Olga. Vladmir admires the sophisticated Onegin for his self confidence as Vladmir is unsure of himself and seems to be trying too hard to please everybody. Well, it seems that Olga has a sister, the beautiful Tatyana played by Liv Tyler, who steals the heart of the audience with her ability to show emotion with just a glance from her large eyes. She falls in love with Onegin and declares her love for him. But he cruelly rejects her and engages in a flirtation with her sister. This infuriates Vladmir who challenges Onegin to a duel.

At this point in the film, I think I should have been fully engaged, feeling the passion of the story. Instead I was a detached as Onegin, who goes on to have the tables turned on him when he meets Tatyana six years later.

I enjoyed the film for its story, its cinematography and it's acting. I also like the way it was representative of its times and depicted the frivolous world of Russian aristocracy. I liked the direction too, especially one scene that depicts Tatyana, Olga and their mother hearing some tragic news. The dialog for that scene is purposely muted and it's a very effective technique. However, I never really got caught up in emotion, which was something this story called for.


Rating:
Summary: FABULOUS PERIOD PIECE ABOUT UNREQUITED LOVE, BUT..
Review: Captivating visuals, a very elegant Liv Tyler, a somewhat baffled Ralph Fiennes with round-the-clock disheveled hair, and some excellent costumes. What a brilliant piece of period drama.

However, marred a bit by a very simplistic, unpredictable story. Based on Pushkin's poem of the same name set in 19th century Russia. Isn't there a thing these days of taking some creative liberty with the original work ala "Romeo And Juliet"? Also, in the face of an obvious bent towards cinematographic appeal, the movie's pace suffers and the DEPTH of either the 19th century or Russia is largely amiss.

That said, the acting and sets are very convincing and although you know what's going to happen next, the interest somehow lingers. Until the denouement in fact, when Tyler turns in a marvellously touching performance that more than makes up for her wooden countenance throughout the film, as well as mildly successful attempts at a British accent. Or so I thought.

If you are in for a beautifully shot movie of melancholy romance, this may be your thing. Otherwise, a mild recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: Agonizing Yet Beautiful, Unrealized Love At Its Best
Review: Comparable to "An Age of Innocence" in pace and message, Onegin reminds us of the danger and sometimes irreversible and devastating consequences that procrastination and pride can have when allowed to enter a relationship.

Beautifully cast and developed, this story was riveting to watch as each tragic event slowly unfolded, revealing strengths and flaws in characters each of us can identify with at some level.

Rating:
Summary: No Chemistry
Review: Eugene Onegin, Pushkin's verse poem, cannot really be "relayed" into film. The attempt here is admirable and obviously took some gumption, however, there is no chemistry between Liv Tyler and Ralph Fiennes, which ruins the plot at its very core. Pleasant to watch if you have two hours to kill and want to scrutinize the work of Martha Fiennes directorial debut. However, I would rent this one. Bernard Rose's Anna Karenina is the one to purchase among the Russian greats.

Rating:
Summary: interesting version of Pushkin work
Review: 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.