Anton Chekhov’s THE SEAGULL is great material for a first-rate film. Director Michael Mayer’s screen adaptation of Chekhov’s 1896 play is a visually lovely production with a top-tier cast with wonderful locations, sets and costumes. “The Seagull”was the first of Chekhov’s four great plays, a work full of human meaning, and one of the great classics of literature. Sadly, “great classic” does not describe this film.
Michael Mayer’s THE SEAGULL is not so much a bad film as a deeply disappointing one. It should have been a great film – it has all the lavish trappings of a great film, fabulous cast included, yet it is a hollow shell, all surface with little underneath. The problem seems to be two-fold. First, Stephen Karam’s script does violence to Chekhov’s work, reducing the 3-hour play to a mere 99 minutes. Then, director Michael Mayer hurries the cast through mechanical, emotionless readings of this truncated material, allowing for little room for development of characters or relationships between.
Which is really a shame. It is a waste of a terrific cast, an ensemble cast that seems perfect, and includes stars Annette Bening, Saoirse Ronan, Brian Dennehy, Corey Stoll, and Elisabeth Moss, and other gifted actors. The cast does manage to sneak through some good moments but not enough to salvage the film entirely. One often feels as if the director is deliberately holding them back, forcing them to rein in the emotion.
READ THE FULL REVIEW AT WeAreMovieGeeks.com:
http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2018/06/the-seagull-review/
