Onegin

Yevgeny Onegin, Alexander Pushkin's great "novel in verse," is already a great opera (Peter Tchaikovsky) and a great ballet (John Cranko), so why not a great movie? This Fiennes family affair (Ralph plays Onegin, Martha directs, and Magnus is listed as composer) is, to my knowledge, the first cinematic adaptation of Pushkin's poem, and though it's not great, it deserves better than the limited distribution it seems to be getting. Ralph Fiennes makes a convincing transition from bored (and boring) St. Petersburg socialite to a man who's touched by Tatyana's letter even though he can't return her feelings, and then to the born-again disciple of Venus who falls for Tatyana after she's married his cousin. Liv Tyler is a heavy, intense, monochromatic Tatyana who's nonetheless moving in her artlessness; Lena Headey as her sister Olga walks a delicate, imaginative line between superficial and sympathetic; Toby Stephens as Olga's beloved Lensky is appropriately boyish and obtuse.

What's more, Martha Fiennes gives unsettling life to the idea that poet Lensky should have fallen for Tatyana and that it's the flighty, even worldly Olga who suits Onegin. I just wish it weren't all so arty (Tatyana's silent scream after the fatal duel, for example) and brooding and, well, British -- this Onegin calls to mind the Anna Karenina that Masterpiece Theatre gave us some 25 years ago, a masterpiece in its way but in no way Russian. The actors butcher their names from time to time, we don't hear the whole of Tatyana's letter (one of the great passages in all of Russian literature), and as for the score, why compose drivel when Tchaikovsky is available? In an ideal world of multiple filmed Onegins, this one would be just better than average; in the event, it's in a class by itself.

-- Jeffrey Gantz