Drama Film Review Chekhov The Seagull

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My week was dominated by a series of free events at the University Of Central Lancashire (UCLan), celebrating Anton Chekhov’s first major play, The Seagull. This was topped and tailed with two very different movie adaptations of the play, one from Russia made in 1972, and a 2018 US version. The play itself, written in 1905, centres on a struggling dramatist, Konstantin, trying to premiere his first unpublished production to his immediate family and their friends, who include distinguished actors and writers. Much of the action takes place at a lakeside country estate. Konstantin gives the leading role in his play to a neighbour, Nina, a young lady with aspirations to be a great actress. Konstantin loves her and sees her as his Muse. Unfortunately the experimental play he stages is a disaster. The audience fail to take its message of despair seriously and chat among themselves. Konstantin angrily pulls the curtain within minutes of his show starting, and regards his passionate ambitions as crushed. Various characters yearn for one another. Konstantin longs for Nina, failing to see that a girl called Masha loves him. Masha wears black throughout, a Goth-like mindset sense of her mourning for her own dead empty life. She rejects other love by claiming she has torn her own heart out. No one seems sympathetic or supportive to Konstantin, (the doctor alone seemed to think his writing shows promise). Konstantin shoots a seagull in his frustration, coldly, cruelly presenting the carcass to Nina as a symbol of the future of her career and his love. He tries unsuccessfully to commit suicide, though he will succeed in this two years later after Nina says farewell to him, showing that though not a great actress, she has found work with an impoverished group of traveling players, often moving from town to town by third class train. She has broken free of the Seagull curse set by Konstantin. No matter how bad things get she keeps going. The Seagull represents many things to many people. To me it means that which is free to fly has no fixed place but being stopped by love, life, ambition or of course, death, destroys us. The characters are stagnating in former glories, Konstantin is depressed by the failure of his dreams and only Nina keeps flying, even though her life disappoints her. The Russian film version is quite faithful to the text and allows all the characters equal importance. The US version Is rather over-lavish, trying to fit the movie too firmly into the costume drama period piece world of various Austen, Bronte and Dickens adaptations. It puts too much emphasis on sexual love, with characters looking constantly on the brink of bed hopping and seduction. There is a needless skinnydipping scene for Konstantin near the start, to give a false impression of more nudity to come. It doesn’t happen. The camera flies around wildly, never resting too long on any given character or backdrop for long. Konstantin (Billy Howle) is given low billing beside his mother, (Annette Belling). Brian Dehenny acts as if he is in a production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof instead of this play. Much of the film is given in liberty taking flashback from the brink of the finale suicide which later comes with an equally needless voice-over recap of Nina’s speech from the start of Konstantin’s doomed play. The film also features many ‘reminder’ shots of seagulls, including a prop of one in the play within the play. It is an utter mess, and utterly ruins a masterpiece of World drama. The fascinating talks and discussions after and between film screenings were conducted by visiting Bulgarian academic, Professor Lyudmil Dimitrov and Bulgarian theatre director, Stilyan Petrov, as well as their translator, Olga Tabachnikov, Director of The Vladimir Vysotsky Centre for Russian Studies at The University Of Central Lancashire (UCLAN), School of Language and Global Studies, who hosted and organized these events. Her own reaction to the US film was a spectacular discourse on how angry it left her. A big thanks to Olga, UCLan and Lancashire Arts for organizing these events. Arthur Chappell