Vanya on 42nd Street

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Andrei D @RT74856639 May 24, 2025 Wallace Shawn is very good but the rest of the cast is too theatrical and the structure too classic See more S R @ScottR May 22, 2025 I saw it since it was on the NYT 1000 movies list. It was a pleasant surprise to see a theater production in an old NY Theater on film. It is well acted and made. SLC DVD. See more lou l @RT60623808 Nov 4, 2024 Mise in abyme, ellipse, the most easy way to Tchekov, in my personnal case. See more dave s @RT68722908 Sep 8, 2022 Vanya on 42nd Street, an odd but faithful adaptation of Chekhov's play, is set in a rundown New York theater where a group of actors gather to rehearse Uncle Vanya. It's worth watching for a few reasons. It is the final directorial effort for Louis Malle, the great French director who died shortly after the film was released. The cast, featuring Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore and Brooke Smith, all give solid performances. Above all, the play, about the complexity of family dynamics, is timeless. Out of fairness, the film is a bit wordy and may be off-putting to anyone who objects to what is essentially a filmed stage play, but it remains a fairly compelling story and should be of interest to most audiences. See more Irene M @igawel May 1, 2022 This reignited my love of seeing plays. It felt like he was a contemporary of Ibsen. found our way to it after seeing the film "Drive My Car", which is based on a short story that involves a production of the play. See more Nov 21, 2019 Vanya on 42nd Street is really just a performance of the play Uncle Vanya. It is made unique because it is presented by modern-day people in a theater rehearsing their performance of this play. Therefore, it looks current in wardrobe, but I suspect it remains pretty faithful to the classic script from the late 19th century. I was not familiar with this particular story from Chekhov before sitting down to watch the film, but that didn’t seem to be a detriment. I followed the story relatively well, mostly because of the wonderful acting of this cast. Most of them are not A-list stars of the big screen, but they clearly have some experience on the stage or with this play in particular because they all felt dialed into these performances. I guess the best compliment I can pay to all of them is that after a little while the pretense of the stage melted away for me, and I was there on the ground of that Russian estate with them. It was almost jarring when they took an act break and the camera pulled back to show us the director and spectators. It was a bit challenging at times to follow the story of Vanya on 42nd Street mostly because the dialogue is written almost like Shakespearean prose. This kind of writing, despite the fact that it’s mostly words I know, takes a great deal of concentration for me to decipher. When the film started, I was worried that I would be lulled into boredom and start to shut out what people were saying because it was too hard for me to see through to the meaning of their words. Yet, I somehow latched on when the emotions started to elevate and I could sense the feelings of each character. It all culminated in a glorious rant from Wallace Shawn that finally unveiled any remaining mystery about the story and allowed me to follow the tale to the end. Uncle Vanya is a heavy and somewhat depressing tale at the heart of it all, and I’ll admit that kind of story is tough for me to endure. While I was invested in Vanya on 42nd Street, the writing and the nature of the story kept me from loving it. However, it made me interested enough to someday seek out a stage production of this play. See more Read all reviews

Vanya on 42nd Street

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