The Seagull (2018): Hope and Despair

The Seagull is a star-studded cinema adaptation of the classic tragicomic play by Anton Chekhov, the first of his four major theatrical works (the others being Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard). I saw a pre-release screening a few weeks ago, and really liked it.

Given the status of the play, which Chekhov, who must have had a weird sense of humor, referred to it as a comedy, it’s rather surprising that there have not been more attempts to bring it to the silver screen. As far as I can tell there are only two films directly from the play: There’s a Russian movie also called The Seagull (aka “Chayka”)  from 1970 that’s available on YouTube (with English subtitles), and a British-American version from 1968 called The Sea Gull, directed by Sidney Lumet, that’s reputedly pretty awful, notwithstanding a fine cast featuring Vanessa Redgrave, Simone Signoret, James Mason and David Warner. 

The new version, opening in select theaters on Friday May 18, and somewhat more widely on May 25, also features a top-notch cast headed by Annette Bening, plus Saoirse Ronan, Corey Stoll, Elisabeth Moss, Brian Dennehy, Billy Howle and Mare Willingham. Having followed up my viewing by reading the play, I can say that the screenplay, by the Tony Award winning playwright Stephen Karam (whose brilliant 2015 drama The Humans was one of the best contemporary plays I’ve seen in years) follows Chekhov’s text pretty closely, which makes it too pretty great. As is the acting. The Seagull - play or movie - is very much an ensemble piece, with between four and six principal characters (depending how you count), so it is key that everyone holds up their end – which is pretty much the case here (with one possible exception).

While the Chekhov’s play, first produced in 1896, is widely regarded as a masterwork and one of the seminal works of modern theater, movie-critics so far are divided on the quality of the new motion picture. Most agree that the acting is terrific, and that theThe Seagull is worth seeing on that score alone. Folks like David Edelman of New York Magazine, Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian, and Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times have praised the film. Others have been disappointed for various reasons.

A.O. Scott of the NY Times, whose reviews I usually like, acknowledged the solid underpinnings  and the superlative acting, but felt that the camera work was too busy, disrupting the rhythm of some important scenes. I respectfully disagree. One of the scenes Scott disliked involved a key moment when Bening’s character, Irina, launches into a hurtful argument with her adult son, the sensitive Konstantin. The way this was shot seemed to enhance rather than impede the drama and emotion of that moment for me.

Other critics wrote that the movie was superficial, not as deep or nuanced as the play. Such an assessment may depend, of course, on which production of the stage version one has seen, if any, and when.  One reviewer acknowledged this, saying that the picture seemed a little flat compared to one of the several stage productions he had experienced, adding that everyone who has seen the play probably has a favorite moment, and nothing in the movie will quite rise to that level. As I’ve said, Karam’s screenplay is remarkably similar to Chekhov’s text. (The film does a bit of tinkering with the order of things, commencing with a bit of the first part of the final act, then doubling back to the beginning of the story, following that straight through to where we started and continuing straight on to the end. I found that this worked pretty well and gave extra meaning and context to the repeated part.  None of the reviews that I’ve seen, even the tepid ones, took issue with this.)

It should go without saying that film and dramatic theater are different mediums, but it bears repeating that any comparison must take this into account. There’s an immediacy in the experience of watching good live actors performing a dramatic scene on a stage right in front of you which can’t be duplicated on film (or video) in the same way. On the other hand, movies can enhance an actor’s subtle, often wordless expression of emotion and/or interiority through closeups, zooms, soundtracks, and so forth in ways that plays can’t. Just as one can’t directly compare a movie qualitatively to the novel it’s based upon (or vice versa), it’s neither fair nor apt to rate a movie by equating it the play on which it’s based. The same is true respecting the relatively new phenomenon of  stage musicals - such as Frozen, Kinky Boots, Mean Girls – derived from movies; they are just different animals.  One can prefer one type of rendition over another but a movie needs to be judges as a movie, a play as a play, a Broadway musical as a musical, each on its merits in the chosen medium.

This is easy for me to say here, since I have not had the good fortune to see a stage production of The Seagull. And as I’ve said, I quite liked the movie. Yes, the movie remains rather stagey, even though the picture undoubtedly opened things up in a nice way - scenes in a rowboat on a lake actually take place in a rowboat on a lake, for example. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Denzel Washington’s Oscar-nominated drama Fences feels stagey in the same way – for the same reason. As does Sleuth (1972), the terrific mystery-thriller starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine (based on a play by Anthony Shaffer), and numerous other cinema adaptations, I’m sure.

For those who haven’t seen it in any form, The Seagull is about the tangled relationships of the various folks hanging out in and around a lakeside summer dacha, owned by the famous actress Irina (Annette Bening), and her recently retired, civil servant brother Sorin (Brian Dennehy).  While Sorin is a modest, regretful sort, Irina is a vain prima donna, anxious to hold on to her star status and her fading beauty. These qualities, among other things, alienate her adult, mid-twenties son Konstantin (Billy Howle), an aspiring but so far unsuccessful playwright, who has grown up on the estate, largely ignored by his mother. Irina has brought her younger lover Boris Trigorin (Corey Stoll) there this summer. Boris is an accomplished and very popular writer, albeit somewhat self-effacing.  Konstantin is in love with Nina (Saoirse Ronan), a lovely local girl, who longs to become a successful actress like Irina, and who admires and falls in love with Boris (who is not unreceptive). Meanwhile, Masha (Elizabeth Moss), daughter of the estate’s managers Shamarayev (Glenn Fleshler) and Polina (Mare Willingham), can’t help but love Konstantin, even though he despises her. Masha drinks, takes snuff, and generally goes around dressed in black, like a a 19^th century goth, feeling sorry for herself, while spurning the guy who loves her, the impecunious schoolteacher Medvedenko (Michael Zegen). Polina, it turns out, actually loves the beloved country doctor, Dorn (Jon Tenney), but then Dorn has had affairs with pretty much all the local ladies over the years, Polina and Irena included.

Got that?

The Seagull wouldn’t be the classic it is if it was just about unrequited loves. The play is stuffed with dialogue, and the movie is talky too. The storylines and the dialogue touch on many themes – most obviously the sometimes absurd sometimes tragic complications of romantic love in its many flavors, not least the misplaced, unrequited variety; as well as unrequited familial love. The Seagull is also self-consciously about the meaning of and value of art and artistic endeavor, about beauty, vanity, self-delusion and other human follies. Then there are the related themes of ambition (including the unfulfilled variety), accomplishment and disappointment. At one point, a gravely ill Sorin laments, “In my youth, I wanted to become a writer – I didn’t. I wanted to speak well – I spoke atrociously. … I wanted to marry – I didn’t. I wanted to live in town all the time – and here I am ending my days in the country and so on.”

A story like this lives or dies on the quality of the acting.  As already noted, the performances here are generally quite lovely. Annette Bening is terrific as the egocentric, sometimes shockingly cruel Irena. One cool example is a scene in which she confronts Boris about his infatuation with Nina, persuading him to stay with her instead, then winks at us, seemingly channeling Richard III’s wooing of Lady Anne (“Was ever a woman in this humour won?”). It is    as if Bening was born for this part; and perhaps she was, considering that she first played middle-aged Irena over thirty years ago at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater when Bening herself was in her mid-twenties.

Stoll, as Boris, is also at the top of his form, charming, philosophical, and while initially flattered and amused at the attentions of the much younger Nina, eventually besotted with an amour fou. Ronan brings the character of the naïve Nina to life in her growing infatuation with the great writer and her fantasy-ambition of becoming famous. Moss, although rather too old for the part at 35, is somehow just fine as Masha, the a black-clad romantic Eeyore. Tenney is engaging and wise as the handsome Dr Dorn; and Dennehy is world-weary and perceptive as Sorin.

The only weak-link, kind-of, is Billy Howle as Konstantin. The character is a difficult one to be sure – an idealistic young guy whose talent doesn’t appear to rise to his ambition, an ambition built on a desire to compete with his uber-successful mother. He’s also a man-boy who has got both an infantile love for and an equally strong adolescent resentment bordering on hate for his inconsiderate mother; as well as yet another despairing victim of unrequited romantic love. As portrayed by the 29-year-old Howle, 25-year-old Konstantin acts like he’s 15. Even if that’s the way the part is written, something else is not quite right: Howle  doesn’t muff his lines, but he doesn’t quite inhabit them either. Or so it seemed to me.

That just drops my grade for this movie from A to A-. I still recommend it. Great story, great screenplay and wonderful acting makes The Seagull a film well worth checking out. It’s that rare  meatier movie you can think your teeth into as we enter the cotton candy season of superheroes, action flicks and puerile comedies.

99 minutes.  PG-13

Grade: A-

In limited rolling release. Opens in San Francisco and several other cities on Friday May 18, 2018. Opens in Berkeley, San Rafael and Pleasant Hill California and other cities around the US on May 25. Check your local listings.