Vanya on 42nd Street (Criterion Collection) (1994)

I remembered loving this "small" film when I saw it in the theater, so I knew I'd be happy with the DVD, whether it had any extras or not (it doesn't). Although Julianne Moore has made it big since making Uncle Vanya ("Boogie Nights," "Nine Months," "The End of the Affair"), and her lovely face dominates the DVD cover, "Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street" is truly ensemble acting at its best. Wallace Shawn as the title character does a powerful job of holding the viewer's interest, even though his Vanya is riddled with smugness, envy, self-pity, and lethargy. There are things about his performance that make you wonder if Louis Malle wasn't thinking of "Uncle Vanya" as a sequel to "My Dinner with Andre" (especially since Andre Gregory plays the director who has gathered his troupe of actors to rehearse Uncle Vanya in the falling down New Amsterdam Theater in New York City). In both movies, Shawn plays a man facing a mid-life crises, plagued with self-doubt and floundering around, looking for reasons to go on.

What struck me on my recent viewing of the film was how timeless Checkhov's story really is. Like Jane Austen, he has a great ability to find the universal in the pettiness of highly-controlled domestic life. In comparing Mamet's rendering with Paul Schmidt's excellent recent translation, it seems Mamet did a good job of crafting speakable lines. He modernized the play without wrenching it from its original time or setting. Since the performance we see is a final run-through, not a dress rehearsal, we receive no visual clues as to when the play within the movie actually begins. Malle's light hand in this regard only reinforces the dubiousness of the distinction between theater/art and reality (a much discussed subject in "My Dinner with Andre").

The decision to film "Uncle Vanya" in the decaying New Amsterdam Theater was an inspired one. When Dr. Astrov (Larry Pine), the play's most forward-looking character, bemoans the cultural and spiritual devastation caused by deforestation and human indifference to the environment, one can't help but think of the plight of 42nd Street itself. The New Amsterdam's resurrection--thanks to Disney dollars--as the current home of "The Lion King" is not without it's ironies. As all of the characters in "Uncle Vanya" are painfully aware, our futures are always purchased at a very high price. And the losses we are likely to experience as we move towards those futures may be greater than any of us will be able to bear.

"Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street" is one of those great works of art, like Eugene O'Neill's "A Long Day's Journey into Night," that makes you stop and take stock of your life.

Director Louis Malle, a decade or so after My Dinner with Andre, teamed once again with Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn to create Vanya on 42nd Street, and the second film is even more brilliant than the first. To help actors keep up their acting chops between jobs, Gregory staged recurring performances of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in a decrepit, abandoned Broadway theater (since renovated by Disney to accommodate The Lion King) and inviting selected guests to witness the proceedings. As filmed by Malle, this performance comes as close to smashing the barriers between film and theater as any films ever made (even Olivier's films of Henry V and Hamlet didn't succeed quite as well). Although the performances of Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore and other New York actors are uniformly impressive, the standout is Brooke Smith, an actress of whom I know little (save for a guest shot on "Law and Order"). This movie shows us what a genius we lost when Louis Malle died, much too young.

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This film removes the old stigma surrounding Chekhov and allows audiences of all ages and backgrounds to access the brilliance, pain, laughter, and humanity of his work. It may even motivate some viewers to seek out more of his writings. The direction by Louis Maller, the translation by David Mamet and all of the performances are the most gripping, realistic, entrancing I've ever seen of "Uncle Vanya". It shows what can be achieved with no set, no costumes, just great actors, with a great script, doing what they do best.

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If anything in life is certain it is that if you didn't like Louis Malle's "My Dinner with Andre" you won't like his "Vanya on 42nd Street. But even this cannot be entirely depended on, because if you have matured as a movie viewer since seeing "Andre", you might find yourself unexpectedly able to appreciate "Vanya".

Both films are superficially minimalist, relying on script and acting talent to entertain, although Malle's shot selection is also an important element of Vanya. The only real effect is a recorded voice-over sequence for Julianne Moore's character Yelana. As the voice-over plays Yelana's thoughts, the camera is tight on her face and Moore's facial expressions must subtly mirror her thoughts. This is a routine "film" device but in this stage-film context it provides Malle an opportunity to simultaneously utilize the best of both mediums. Acting for camera is different than acting for the stage, particularly in the degree of expression dimension. In this sequence Moore must act for the camera while pretending to be acting for a theater audience. I think this was the best sequence in the film, tight shots like this are an area where the film performance is more demanding than a live stage performance.

The opening scenes of "Vanya on 42nd Street" suggest "My Dinner with Andre", as each member of the scattered ensemble makes their way through the crowded streets of Manhattan for a rehearsal at the rundown New Amsterdam Theater. Once inside they exchange casual conversation and before we realize it the play has started. The lighting has been subtly altered and a large table on the stage has become a sitting room on a rural estate in Russia. But this is not a dress rehearsal and the cast performs in their street clothes.

The subject of Anton Chekhov's late 19th century play is what use should we make of our lives? The deeper subject is the moment of introspection when one confronts the fear that they have wasted theirs. Some complain that since the play is a translation from Russian and is over 100 years old, it reflects a culture too foreign to be of relevance today. While they are correct about regular reminders that the setting is not contemporary, you just as regularly find yourself surprised that Chekhov's subject and theme are so universal and timeless.

During Sonya's long monologue to close the film (perfectly handled by Brooke Smith who literally glows from the moment you see her in the first crowd scene) I was reminded of Virginia Woolf's likewise introspective "Mrs. Dalloway"-written 30 years later in England. Sonya closes the play by expressing her hopes that while we can do nothing but endure in this life, at least we may find a perfect mercy beyond the grave. Clarissa Dalloway looks through a bookshop window to find the passage "Fear no more the heat o' the sun/Nor the furious winter's rages".

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

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This statement belongs to a clever dialogue between the doctor and Vanya's niece in the middle of the night. Few directors along the history of the cinema have been able this brilliant and enviable opportunity to express with major solemnity, supreme conviction and admirable honesty, his last creative Op. like Louis Malle, a very prominent director who adapted the powerful, incisive and even neo existential play of Chejov around a crumbling and abandoned theater in Manhattan, where Malle accents and carves in relief not only his profound love for the actuality of this work; he makes a true tour de force around the lives and times of these personages where every one has something to hide, miss and love. Nobody is happy because there is not any innocent happiness. There `s a lot of issues to be considered, analyzed and scrutinized that you will have to watch several times to taste, delight and enjoy it due its single grandness. Filmed with outstanding realism, wondrous angle shots, suggestive illumination and supported by a formidable cast in which nothing is out of control. Marvelously made and one of my twenty top films of the Nineties.

In case you just have only heard about it, get close and convince by yourself. This is a masterpiece, under any possible angle.

A must-see for the students of acting and formidable evidence the theater may be conveyed to the cinematic stage, with pristine elegance.

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