Review of the film “Onegin” by Sarik Andreasyan

“Onegin” by Sarik Andreasyan was released – oddly enough, the first film adaptation of Pushkin’s novel in verse in Russian cinema without references to Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name. Staged with schoolboy zeal, the picture reminded Yulia Shagelman brief retellings of Russian classics for careless students.

The first Onegin, filmed back in 1911, was silent and relied mainly on an opera libretto for its script. The 1958 Soviet film was precisely an adaptation of the opera: Galina Vishnevskaya sang voiceover for Ariadne Shengelaya (Tatyana), Larisa Avdeeva for Svetlana Nemolyaeva (Olga), and Evgeniy Kibkalo for Vadim Medvedev (Onegin). There was also the British “Onegin” in 1999, filmed by the sister of a big fan of Russian culture, Ralph Fiennes, with him in the title role. Russian viewers remembered this film mainly for the anachronistic use of the melodies “Oh, the viburnum is blooming” and “On the hills of Manchuria” – they say, what else can you expect from foreigners who, no matter how much they want, are unable to penetrate Russian life even in its encyclopedic expression.

However, in the new domestic “Onegin”, for which the St. Petersburg mansion of Baron Stieglitz was partially restored, the stables and forge of the Elagin Palace were recreated and more than a hundred brass door handles were cast according to ancient samples, compliance with the depicted era cannot be called a priority either. In the middle of a luxurious St. Petersburg restaurant, furnished with pseudo-empire furniture from the latest furniture catalogue, a murderous plaster fountain suddenly appears, at the sight of which the aristocratic youth of Pushkin’s times would have vomited into starched napkins. Right in the arch of the General Staff building, some women in zipuns are selling pumpkins and some bunches of dried flowers from carts to others, and peasants in frankly plastic bast shoes splash past in the puddles. Everything here is new, fresh, uninhabited: the shirts on the bars and on the serfs shine with whiteness, the tailcoats almost crunch at the folds, rhinestones and artificial pearls shine on the ladies’ necks, and the empty rooms of estates and palaces look as if they were from It took ten minutes for the sightseers to show up and the film crew had to hurry up.

The group, however, is in no hurry. For some reason, the creators of the film wanted to stretch the uneventful storyline into 141 minutes of screen time, so everything here happens slowly, solemnly and with meaningful pauses, be it a dialogue between lovers, a village tea party, a game of billiards or a discussion of the freshness of Odessa oysters (scenes included in the film from Onegin’s journey, in which he sports a dazzling white top hat against the backdrop of the sea, clearly digitally rendered). A peasant boy in rapid speed runs with a letter from Tatiana (Lisa Moryak) to Onegin (“the philosopher at eighteen years old” is played by forty-year-old Viktor Dobronravov, not quite “like the windy Venus, when, having put on a man’s outfit, the goddess goes to a masquerade”). The coffin of Lensky (Denis Prytkov) is lowered into the grave in a rapid manner. What can we say about the fatal duel – of course, it was filmed in rapid motion, but how else will the audience be imbued with the weight of the moment. For the same purpose, Lensky’s farewell poems (“Where, where have you gone” and so on) are repeated at least three times.

In general, the authors had a difficult time with poetry: getting the characters to speak in rhyme in everyday situations would be strange, but if “My uncle has the most honest rules…” is not heard from the screen, then the audience will think that the money for the ticket was wasted. Therefore, in the film there is the figure of the Narrator (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), who from time to time reads out poetic remarks “from the author,” while Onegin is an old friend not of him, but of another official character who has not been awarded either a name or any other function. Tatyana and Onegin also write their letters in verse, voiced off-screen by the voices of the characters (the line “I’m finishing! It’s scary to re-read…” is reduced to the last two words with the iron hand of self-censorship: as if no one would think anything), while in the frame their understudies diligently reproduce the clerk’s calligraphy from the 1820s, but, alas, they randomly arrange yati and er.

Andreasyan’s regular screenwriter Alexei Gravitsky translated the dialogues into prose, decorating it with such gems as “don’t be stupid”, “quit this decadence” and “habit is a great gift, replaces happiness” – the last maxim belongs, according to the film, to Mrs. Larina (Alena Khmelnitskaya). During this operation, all Pushkin’s lightness, gaiety and wit disappeared from the text and from the film. The authors’ own humor, who invented, for example, Onegin’s comic neighbor with the already quite Gogolian surname Skotinina (Olga Tumaikina), who pursues our hero with the goal of marrying one of her four daughters, cannot serve as an adequate replacement for them.

In general, despite the glossiness of the picture, the “modern” approach, the freshly cast brass handles and the deep respect for the original source declared at the start, the film was shot as if its creators carried through their entire lives the conviction that the Russian classics from the school curriculum are unbearably boring, which can only be read under duress. What low deceit on their part.