A review of The Seagull by a person who is kind of "eh" on Chekhov

When I watched the trailer for the new adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Michael Mayer, I felt a deep sense of sinking dread. Not every movie is made with every person in mind, and that is absolutely fine! But The Seagull was most certainly not made for me. The trailer reminded me of a trailer from the early 00s, where rather than cutting together moments, an entire scene played out. An entire scene, full of uncompressed Chekhov dialogue and overzealous musical cues. I turned to my mother, with whom I was about to sit slack-jawed through Book Club, and said "That looks...long."

Almost every review I've read of The Seagull, a problem with movie reviews in general, is written by a man in his forties. Occasionally a woman, always white. This movie is oppressively white. This movie is stuffy. It is presented for an audience who are familiar Chekhov, who want to rub their university educations on their friends when they tell them "The new Chekhov adaptation was a fresh take on a classic!" It largely relies on the tried and tested strengths of Chekhov's writing and thematic elements rather than working with the format. It is beautiful, for sure, and well acted. But it is clumsy in its construction, and bizarre in editing, and carelessly translated from stage to screen.

If the story feels trite, it's largely because the elements have been so endlessly cribbed by other filmmakers. I've seen other reviewers talk a lot about Woody Allen's use of Chekhovian plots and honestly, I'd rather throw myself into traffic than talk about that man! The plot could - could - have been done well. Annette Bening is in her element as the actress matriarch of a deeply dysfunctional, inexplicably English-speaking Russian family at a countryside manor. Her husband, played by Corey Stoll, is infatuated with Saoirse Ronan's character, who's dating Bening's son - Billy Howle in possibly the most melodramatic role of all time. Elisabeth Moss is there, and she's in love with Howle's character, but some guy is in love with her; meanwhile, her mother is in love with the doctor whose affections are fixed on Bening herself. I could have been on board. As a story, I have no problem with The Seagull. I love a twisted melodrama critiquing levels of art and vanity. I love loves that go unfulfilled.

Sadly, in The Seagull, these critiques are never leaned into. The criticism of art without creativity and creativity as vanity is lost in a cinematic recreation of a play from 1895. Instead, what is leaned into is the melodrama, and never in ways that feel satisfying. I cannot laugh along with Moss' character, nor can I feel pity for her strange distortion of the idea of love, wherein love is a fixed emotion that sustains for the entire life of a character. She is in mourning for her life because her love is unrequited, and I can neither laugh at her silliness nor sympathise with her tragic plight, and I can't tell what I'm supposed to. 

These faults are mostly personal. They are things that can be explained by youth and cynicism and predisposition to dislike overindulgent period pieces. What can't? The clunkiness. Possibly due to Mayer's long history with directing for stage and the history of the piece in theatre, this movie shares the fault that many stage-to-screen adaptations have: characters are constantly, constantly explaining what has just happened. We do not need to be told who is fighting with who, or who has gone to which room, because we saw it happen. This movie feels overly long, and it is not helped by this needless exposition. Also needless? Early in the movie, a scene plays out. It will later be replayed and expanded. In both instances, the scenes are too long. In the first, it lacks the triggers that will make it possible for us to recall it quickly later. In the second, it lacks those same things to make the audience recall the scene from before. My grandmother watched the entire thing and thought that the circumstances were just repeating themselves. It's clumsy filmmaking, and could have been tidied with a little bit of force in the editing room. 

Everyone in this movie is detestable, and the movie cannot decide whether it wants them to be (bar a couple who it knows to be terrible). It wants the luxury of shades of grey and moral ambiguity, but lacks the commitment to those ideas. It wants to elevate Chekhov's ideas and themes but it also wants to appease the central, neutral audience. It feels longer than it is and can't even build enough emotion for me to hate it a la Darren Aronofsky's personal masturbation session, Mother!. I spent every moment hoping they'd return to a shot of Annette Bening, eye makeup smudged, drawing comedy out from dry material. 

Rating: 4/10 - This movie proves what I've always thought: you can't have a compelling movie about three authors. It's too many authors. We're awful and our struggles are not watchable.


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