Onegin
by Martha Fiennes
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DVD details
Actor: Lena Headey, Liv Tyler, Martin Donovan, Ralph Fiennes, Toby StephensDirector: Martha Fiennes
Brand: Lions Gate
Producer: Ralph Fiennes
Cinematographer: Remi Adefarasin
Producer: Ileen Maisel
Producer: Simon Bosanquet
Writer: Alexander Pushkin
Writer: Michael Ignatieff
Writer: Peter Ettedgui
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-07-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Lions Gate
DVD Reviews of Onegin
DVD Review: beautiful film
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't know what else to say not to repeat what others have said before me... It is a beautiful film with a beautiful story, acting, costumes, scenery, and music score. I am very familiar with Pushkin's novel in verse (we had to learn Tatyana's letter to Onegin by heart in Russian in school). I think this film captures the soul of the story and that time period very well. Moreover, even if you've never read the novel, still it's a beautiful film about love, longing, passion, and staying faithful to your values and morals. I think Liv Tyler did a great job portraying Tatyana. In fact, I could not imagine anyone else doing it better, and thank god, Gwyneth Paltrow wasn't chosen for it (I think she's overrated). Also, this film is not a chick flick, guys will enjoy it too (especially the duel scene). Watch it, I highly recommend it, and afterward check out the Pushkin's novel in verse. Or vice versa.DVD Review: Pushkin On The Silver Screen
Summary: 4 Stars
Onegin is one of the great works of the Russian language and of course not an easy thing to translate onto film. The book was given to me by a Russian woman named Tatiana who said that Tatiana's letter in Onegin expresses the soul of a Russian woman. I think she was right and the film conveys that sense. Visually the film reminded me of "Being There"- dark, moody - but that is Russia - dark colors, museums full of paintings where no one smiles. Streets full of people with dour expressions. A fascination with France notwithstanding Napoleon. I think the movie,thematically and visually, captures what I perceive to be the essence of Russia. I thought the musical score was uninspiring.It is an entertaining movie but somehow, tragically if you like Pushkin, lacking the certain, perhaps undefinable, quality that made Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia great films.DVD Review: Romance and Literature
Summary: 3 Stars
Onegin (1999)
Directed: Martha Fiennes
Cast: Ralph Fiennes: Eugene Onegin, Liv Tyler: Tatiana Larina, Toby Stevens: Vladimir Lensky, Lena Headway:Olga Larina, Martin Donavan: Prince Nikitin
This movie merits some attention, for its style, if not for its content, which is not inconsiderable. Directed by Martha Fiennes, it is really the creation of her brother, Ralph, who had read Alexander Pushkin's poetic drama, Eugene Onegin, when he was a young student, and thought it would make a good movie. It took years for that to be accomplished, and the result is a literary masterpiece translated into the screen with a little more than mediocre results as a movie, but with unmistakable signs of the original genius behind it. The movie has, of course, its plusses, but also is marked and marred by its slow pace, a rather inanimate performance but the exquisitely beautiful Liv Tyler, and a somewhat weak ending. It is lushly photographed, well scored, with gypsy music and an aria from Beethoven's Fidelio, and it does convey the atmosphere and ethos of post-Napoleonic Russia, when land owners still owned serfs and the aristocracy was the dominant class. Onegin was, in the words of Fiennes, an anti-hero, a fatigued, blaze` denizen of the big city (St. Petersburg), who had come to the country to inherit the vast estate of his dead uncle, and who had rather lofty ideas--not ideals--about the inferiority of the local gentry. But he possessed a worn wisdom and sterling honesty that did not allow him to get involved with a young woman whose passion for him he considered impulsive, and was reluctant to enter an ephemeral relationship that would only cause trouble and scandal. But he is attracted to Tatiana Larina more than he would like to admit, and when he imprudently asks Olga Larina, her rather light-headed sister, for an extra dance, he offends the man intended for her, and his best friend, Vladimir Lansky, is not satisfied with anything less than a duel. Onegin, progressive for his age, and knowing he is a superior shot, tries to dissuade Lansky, who is adamant, but fails to fire straight, and in response Onegin kills him. He does indeed consider himself a victim of circumstances, but he could not be a winner in a society still choked by the prejudices and mores of the past, while a new a vigorous romantic spirit was forging ahead. Onegin was certainly a Romantic--as was Pushkin--whose ideas had exceeded their epoch, and who had striven to bring into Russia the spirit of the French revolution and other liberty-oriented causes. What drives the movie, however, and the story, is the passionate love of a woman, and her love for him. Their initial separation does not extinguish their passion, for when they meet six years later, and she is married to an aristocrat in St. Petersburg, she cannot be disloyal to her husband, and he cannot win her. Fiennes (the director) likens the story to a musical quartet, with a lean, streamlined plot, with a small cast, and played within a narrow compass, without the multiple action of the epic--which this movie could have been had it chosen to. Onegin offends by his behavior, but his superior wit and compassion alienates him from the narrow circle he finds himself in, fails both in love, friendship and social connections, and thus he is doomed to estrangement and separation. He is a man of his times, who really does not belong there. His rejection of the lady who loved him will haunt him forever, make him an eternal wanderer, whose passions remained unrewarded, and his life is spent in vain, and, in the final scene, he walks away into a road of obscurity and emotional non-existence.
The movie could have been helped by a more intense and experienced actress than Liv Tyler. Photographed in close-up, and when she does not need to say anything, she looks like an alabaster statue, but when in motion, or in emotionally explosive scenes, she falls short of conviction. A woman to be loved, and who loves so passionately--in a period piece--need not look as contemporary as she does. A Meryl Streep (or, as someone suggested, Gwyneth Paltrow) would have achieved the right dose of emotional depth--but perhaps not look as exquisite. Fiennes, too, looks worn at times, seemingly unable to rise to the violent passion he himself inspires. Used to playing haunted lovers, failed or evil characters, he is convincing as a displaced aristocrat, a man with money and status, whose progressive ideas separate him from his society, but whose passions betray him. His experience, though, guides him through his last scene or two, when, crushed, he has to remove himself from an environment that could lead to distraction. This is a story in some ways resembling its Romantic counterparts--Don Juan by Byron (in a limited way), and Goethe's Werther, in The Sorrows of Young Werther. Romanticism of the early nineteenth century has not revisited our times in the same mass and size, for today's pretensions of it end up being froth emanating from Hollywood, which endlessly dishes out cinematic artifacts meant to be light-hearted entertainment that presents a world that Flaubert would not have feigned to attack, or even recognize. For such productions are not more than sugared candy for spoiled children. Die-hard Romantics can find solace only in the past ages, or their imitations in film--which on rare occasions prefers honesty to exploitation.
DVD Review: historical romance
Summary: 4 Stars
If you enjoy historical romances, you'll be swept away with this movie! Both actors do such a fine job acting here that you forget you're watching a movie. And I loved the moral of the story!!DVD Review: Excellent production
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read the poetic version of this and found this production wonderful. The story was brought to life marvelously. The camera work and scenes, particularly the beginning scene set the tone for this love story.
Description of Onegin
In the opulent st. Petersburg of the empire period eugene onegin is a jaded but dashing aritocrat a man often lacking in empathy who suffers from restlessness melancholy and finally regret. Through his best friend lensky onegin is introduced to the young tatiana. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 09/14/2004 Starring: Ralph Fiennes Liv Tyler Run time: 100 minutes Rating: R Director: Martha FiennesGiven that for Russians, Pushkin's poem Eugene Onegin is sort of like Hamlet, Beowulf, and Lord Byron's Don Juan rolled into one melancholy tale of lost love and ennui among the gentry, it's surprising Russian filmmakers have balked at adapting the film. Having taken a stage production of Hamlet to Russia where it was rapturously received, self-confessed Slavophile actor Ralph Fiennes must have thought he was making reparation when he executive-produced and starred in this faithful adaptation of the film. With Martha Fiennes on board as director, it's something of a family affair with more than a little of the solemnity one often discovers in "personal projects". Pushkin's romanticism comes across amply, but little of his ferocious wit or, inevitably, the authorial voice that makes the poem so compelling, even in translation. Ralph Fiennes typecasts himself in the title role: his Onegin is yet another of the actor's wintry, haunted lovers in period dress (this time early 19th century). The character, a jaded rou? from St. Petersburg, summers in the countryside where he inadvertently wins the heart of the impulsive Tatyana (Liv Tyler, the girl they book when Gwyneth Paltrow's busy). Onegin's casual attitude to her love leads to a tragic duel (magnificently tense and perfectly staged), and years later a chance meeting stirs up feelings of regret, triumph, and moral queasiness. Tears well in eyes, letters are sent and read, furs are ruffled in the snow. This is the highbrow end of costume drama: patrician in its literary purity, and rather admirable in its restraint and good taste, if a little dull. --Leslie Felperin
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