The Seagull, review: Tremendous cast elevates cosy Chekhov adaptation

Dir Michael Mayer; Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening, Corey Stoll, Brian Dennehy, Michael Zegen. Cert 12A, 99 mins

Michael Mayer’s workmanlike film version of Chekhov’s play doesn’t try to reinvent or customise the material for a contemporary western audience. Its one quirk is that all the characters speak with American accents, even if they are on a Russian country estate.

Mayer has assembled a tremendous cast. His strategy is to provide suitably picturesque rural settings and then to let the actors get on with it. He directs as unobtrusively as possible. The film reminds us how much both Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen owed to Chekhov. Every character here has the habit of commentating on his or her own feelings and place in the world. They are almost all in love, but invariably with the wrong people. Their career plans never turn out as they hope.

Annette Bening is wonderfully haughty as Irina, the celebrated actor, visiting the family estate. She has a lacerating tongue. “Since when has the exhibition of a morbid disposition been a new art form,” she sneers at the very pretentious play her son Konstantin (Billy Howle) puts on, looking for every opportunity to undermine him. She is insecure about her fading looks and worried that her lover, Boris Trigorin (Corey Stoll) will abandon her for a young woman. Konstantin is in love with Nina (Saoirse Ronan), but Nina is obsessed with Boris. Boris, for his part, thinks about seducing her almost on a whim. He realises he may end up destroying her but he hasn’t anything better to do.

Mayer captures the comedy, tenderness and the bleakness of the play. His approach isn’t stagey. He uses closeups continually as if, by showing us the faces of the characters, he will enable us to understand all the better what they are thinking and feeling. His fetishistic attention to costume and period detail risks turning the film into a cosy, middlebrow costume drama. At times, we lose sight of the raw emotions that Chekhov is exploring – that gnawing sense of disappointment and betrayal that almost every character ends up feeling. (Most of the protagonists expect to end up unhappy.)

The concluding part of the film, set two years after the balmy weekend in the country, is poignant enough. Things turn out just as badly as everyone anticipates. Ronan gives a very moving performance as the beautiful and headstrong Nina, who seems painfully naive when she first encounters Boris. She is a would-be actor who seems to have immense ability and a very free spirit but she gets her comeuppance soon enough.