Notes on "Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)"
23 June 2018 (nearly 6am)
It's a fitting companion piece to My Dinner with André, especially in that the questions of reality intruding on the "stable" text (not that any text is stable, especially one like this) are so demonstrably affective. There's a bit of that ole Cassavetes overacting going on, especially by Wallace Shawn, but not enough that it derails the entire thing (and, like a Cassavetes film, I can see myself appreciating it more and more as I return to it). I've read Uncle Vanya before, but damn if I remembered literally any of it aside from the shooting. I was struck at its timeliness for now, with its themes of destruction and environmental decay, our place in it, and the sort of toxicity of boredom and impotence. This Vanya seems to me to have aimed not for naturalism but for a strong brand of realism, which I think undercuts some moments in the film, but produces some very strong moments. Brooke Smith, as Sonya, begins on very shaky, stilted ground I felt but emerges very quickly as the most powerful performer–––Julianne Moore's star-level charisma is present even this early on in her career. The structure of the film is odd, how it begins very casually, and slowly loses the trappings of a play on film–––the use of voice-over in act three, or the removal of an act break between three and four. The film as a whole has a remarkable texture in part thanks to the dilapidated Amsterdam theatre they shot in as well as the warm, strong lighting for much of the film. Perhaps the strongest achievement of the film is never feeling stage-bound, and its remarkable pace. The rhythms of the play are subtle, and Chekov's "shapelessness" is much to blame/thank for that, but the actors do so well that even when a I Heart NY coffee cup shows up in the middle of one of the scenes, you don't really feel pulled too far out, even if perhaps that was the intent. I have very little to say about the film as a whole, in part because my feelings on Chekov are very settled, very uninflected with anything resembling an opinion. We're at peace, as it were. I take his work as it is, no more no less. The faintest string hung between myself and Vanya and Sonya at the end of the film as Sonya encourages work as the solution, as all one can do, as I have felt that impulse towards work lately myself. Louis Malle's remarkable talent for shooting a confined film with little happening is without peer, it seems, and for all its lack of pretension, for all its lack of concern with "visuals" I cannot help but find myself deeply unsettled by Vanya on 42nd Street––unsettled in a not-bad way. I simply mean, as I think back on the film, even moreso than My Dinner with André, I find myself deeply in doubt about what it is exactly that makes cinema what it is. It's an encouraging unsettlement.
It's a fitting companion piece to My Dinner with André, especially in that the questions of reality intruding on the "stable" text (not that any text is stable, especially one like this) are so demonstrably affective. There's a bit of that ole Cassavetes overacting going on, especially by Wallace Shawn, but not enough that it derails the entire thing (and, like a Cassavetes film, I can see myself appreciating it more and more as I return to it). I've read Uncle Vanya before, but damn if I remembered literally any of it aside from the shooting. I was struck at its timeliness for now, with its themes of destruction and environmental decay, our place in it, and the sort of toxicity of boredom and impotence. This Vanya seems to me to have aimed not for naturalism but for a strong brand of realism, which I think undercuts some moments in the film, but produces some very strong moments. Brooke Smith, as Sonya, begins on very shaky, stilted ground I felt but emerges very quickly as the most powerful performer–––Julianne Moore's star-level charisma is present even this early on in her career. The structure of the film is odd, how it begins very casually, and slowly loses the trappings of a play on film–––the use of voice-over in act three, or the removal of an act break between three and four. The film as a whole has a remarkable texture in part thanks to the dilapidated Amsterdam theatre they shot in as well as the warm, strong lighting for much of the film. Perhaps the strongest achievement of the film is never feeling stage-bound, and its remarkable pace. The rhythms of the play are subtle, and Chekov's "shapelessness" is much to blame/thank for that, but the actors do so well that even when a I Heart NY coffee cup shows up in the middle of one of the scenes, you don't really feel pulled too far out, even if perhaps that was the intent. I have very little to say about the film as a whole, in part because my feelings on Chekov are very settled, very uninflected with anything resembling an opinion. We're at peace, as it were. I take his work as it is, no more no less. The faintest string hung between myself and Vanya and Sonya at the end of the film as Sonya encourages work as the solution, as all one can do, as I have felt that impulse towards work lately myself. Louis Malle's remarkable talent for shooting a confined film with little happening is without peer, it seems, and for all its lack of pretension, for all its lack of concern with "visuals" I cannot help but find myself deeply unsettled by Vanya on 42nd Street––unsettled in a not-bad way. I simply mean, as I think back on the film, even moreso than My Dinner with André, I find myself deeply in doubt about what it is exactly that makes cinema what it is. It's an encouraging unsettlement.
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