Thursday, April 29, 2010

Anton Chekhov's The Duel


Looks like Chekhov is hot property these days.  Here's a review by Manhola Dargis on the latest adaptation,

The film appears to have come out of nowhere — it hasn’t been making the usual rounds on the festival circuit — so it’s welcome news that it’s been given a berth at Film Forum in Manhattan for its world premiere. It’s the third feature by Dover Kosashvili, a Georgian-born Israeli who made a strong debut with his 2001 “Late Marriage,” about an Israeli man hiding his affair with a divorced mother from his domineering family. Once again, Mr. Kosashvili mixes moments of bitterness and laughter with strong dramatic passages, creating a social milieu in “The Duel” that is believably inhabited, consistently surprising and true-feeling in detail and sweep. (Its most unattractive feature is that ungainly title.) 

Anyone up for The Duel?

5 comments:

  1. Good, rick. Interesting that there appears to be no trailer for this new film.

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  2. Funny, how the full number of comments aren't coming up. Maybe this one will click the comments over on the lead page.

    The pictures I've found for The Duel look lavish. It seems a lot of passion has been put into making this film.

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  3. Started The Duel yesterday and am thoroughly enjoying it. Although the title suggests a fateful conclusion to the story, Chekhov seems to approach it a comic way. Laevsky and Von Koren are fantastic characters.

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  4. Fantastic story! I really liked his "naturalistic" approach and the way he resolved the tensions. I also enjoyed his allusions to Pushkin's Onegin and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, they fit his characters' thoughts and demonstrated how literature is woven into the fabric of Russian cultural life, at least during that time.

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