Just as the lead character named Tolstoy suffers a little whenever he must own up to not being related to the famous Russian novelist, "The Barber of Siberia" is a sprawling, period epic that suffers in comparison to its rich cinematic and literary heritage. Prospects for a major American distribution deal are dim.
The much-anticipated opening film of the 52nd Cannes International Film Festival, and the first feature from director Nikita Mikhalkov since his Oscar-winning "Burnt by the Sun", "Barber" is ostensibly a love story, but not a very complex or compelling one. At nearly three hours, the mostly English-language film indulges in long sequences of Slavic-style comedy that don't necessarily further the story of an enigmatic American woman's love affair with a charismatic Russian army cadet.
Although she confidently attacks the role, Julia Ormond is allowed to indulge in far too many contemporary nuances in her performance as Jane, a lone woman in Czarist Russia circa 1885 on a mission to help desperate inventor McCracken (Richard Harris) secure funds to finish creating a steam-driven forest-harvesting machine, which he hopes will make him rich. Like most of the cast, she tries to keep the energy level high, but one never feels very connected to her character and rarely laughs with the bemused outsider at her zany hosts.
Oleg Menshikov as Cadet Tolstoy, on the other hand, is terrific as the passionate young man who meets Jane on the train to Moscow. They share some champagne in her compartment and a few laughs as his comrades fumble about. Later, they are both on the street in Moscow when mysterious shooters in black assassinate an official. In one of the film's best scenes, Tolstoy shows he's not the best soldier-in-the-making when he lets one of the assassins go free.
Jane visits McCracken's workshop and watches the old coot almost destroy his invention in one of many comic scenes that fall flat. The plan is for Jane to butter up one Gen. Radkov (Alexey Petrenko) in order to gain access to the grand duke -- a source of completion funds, if you will, for McCracken's tree "barber." Open, aggressive, a smoker and seemingly free to wed, Jane succeeds in charming Radkov, but Tolstoy is thoroughly smitten and obviously a much better match despite his lackluster social status.
From cadets polishing a dance floor to outdoor festivals with vodka-drinking bears to a climactic performance of "The Marriage of Figaro", there are some entertaining moments, but the pacing often slows to a crawl, and the framing device of the story -- Ormond's character revealing to her American Army recruit son his origins -- has weak ongoing gags involving gas masks and crude insults aimed at Mozart.
At one point, Tolstoy risks everything to fight a duel over Jane's honor. But he goes even further down the road to ruin when he becomes convinced she's playing all the angles, which she is. Still, he proposes to her, barely beating Radkov to the punch. She is then forced to reveal that she's not who she seems to be -- certainly not McCracken's daughter, as she claimed -- and relates a horrible fact about her past.
Eventually, as in seemingly all Russian love stories of this size and breadth, the lovers are separated -- he's sent off to prison for attacking Radkov in a jealous fit, and she goes back to the States. Ten years later, she accompanies McCracken to Siberia for a test of his machine and goes searching for Tolstoy, who settled there after serving his sentence.
While visually the film has some nice touches, with Mikhalkov working in widescreen for the first time, the overused narration of Ormond's character doesn't wait for one to absorb the story visually. Time and location titles are also employed needlessly, accentuating the overall stodgy feeling to the storytelling. The director has a splendid cameo as Emperor Alexander III, but Harris is disappointing as the mad inventor -- except for a shot of his character yelling on top of a train steaming through the forests in one of this film's rare transcendent moments, the kind one expects a lot more of from Mikhalkov.
THE BARBER OF SIBERIA
Camera One, ThreeProds.,
France 2 Cinema, Medusa, Barrandov Biografia
Michel Seydoux presents
In association with Intermedia Films
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Screenwriters: Rustam Ibragimbekov, Nikita Mikhalkov
Producer: Michel Sedoux
Executive producer: Leonid Vereschagin
Cinematographer: Pavel Lebeshev
Production designer: Vladimir Aronin
Editor: Enzo Meniconi
Costume designers: Natacha Ivanova, Sergey Struchev
Music: Edward Nicolay Artemyev
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jane: Julia Ormond
Tolstoy: Oleg Menshikov
McCracken: Richard Harris
Radkov: Alexey Petrenko
Running time -- 176 minutes
MPAA rating:...
The much-anticipated opening film of the 52nd Cannes International Film Festival, and the first feature from director Nikita Mikhalkov since his Oscar-winning "Burnt by the Sun", "Barber" is ostensibly a love story, but not a very complex or compelling one. At nearly three hours, the mostly English-language film indulges in long sequences of Slavic-style comedy that don't necessarily further the story of an enigmatic American woman's love affair with a charismatic Russian army cadet.
Although she confidently attacks the role, Julia Ormond is allowed to indulge in far too many contemporary nuances in her performance as Jane, a lone woman in Czarist Russia circa 1885 on a mission to help desperate inventor McCracken (Richard Harris) secure funds to finish creating a steam-driven forest-harvesting machine, which he hopes will make him rich. Like most of the cast, she tries to keep the energy level high, but one never feels very connected to her character and rarely laughs with the bemused outsider at her zany hosts.
Oleg Menshikov as Cadet Tolstoy, on the other hand, is terrific as the passionate young man who meets Jane on the train to Moscow. They share some champagne in her compartment and a few laughs as his comrades fumble about. Later, they are both on the street in Moscow when mysterious shooters in black assassinate an official. In one of the film's best scenes, Tolstoy shows he's not the best soldier-in-the-making when he lets one of the assassins go free.
Jane visits McCracken's workshop and watches the old coot almost destroy his invention in one of many comic scenes that fall flat. The plan is for Jane to butter up one Gen. Radkov (Alexey Petrenko) in order to gain access to the grand duke -- a source of completion funds, if you will, for McCracken's tree "barber." Open, aggressive, a smoker and seemingly free to wed, Jane succeeds in charming Radkov, but Tolstoy is thoroughly smitten and obviously a much better match despite his lackluster social status.
From cadets polishing a dance floor to outdoor festivals with vodka-drinking bears to a climactic performance of "The Marriage of Figaro", there are some entertaining moments, but the pacing often slows to a crawl, and the framing device of the story -- Ormond's character revealing to her American Army recruit son his origins -- has weak ongoing gags involving gas masks and crude insults aimed at Mozart.
At one point, Tolstoy risks everything to fight a duel over Jane's honor. But he goes even further down the road to ruin when he becomes convinced she's playing all the angles, which she is. Still, he proposes to her, barely beating Radkov to the punch. She is then forced to reveal that she's not who she seems to be -- certainly not McCracken's daughter, as she claimed -- and relates a horrible fact about her past.
Eventually, as in seemingly all Russian love stories of this size and breadth, the lovers are separated -- he's sent off to prison for attacking Radkov in a jealous fit, and she goes back to the States. Ten years later, she accompanies McCracken to Siberia for a test of his machine and goes searching for Tolstoy, who settled there after serving his sentence.
While visually the film has some nice touches, with Mikhalkov working in widescreen for the first time, the overused narration of Ormond's character doesn't wait for one to absorb the story visually. Time and location titles are also employed needlessly, accentuating the overall stodgy feeling to the storytelling. The director has a splendid cameo as Emperor Alexander III, but Harris is disappointing as the mad inventor -- except for a shot of his character yelling on top of a train steaming through the forests in one of this film's rare transcendent moments, the kind one expects a lot more of from Mikhalkov.
THE BARBER OF SIBERIA
Camera One, ThreeProds.,
France 2 Cinema, Medusa, Barrandov Biografia
Michel Seydoux presents
In association with Intermedia Films
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Screenwriters: Rustam Ibragimbekov, Nikita Mikhalkov
Producer: Michel Sedoux
Executive producer: Leonid Vereschagin
Cinematographer: Pavel Lebeshev
Production designer: Vladimir Aronin
Editor: Enzo Meniconi
Costume designers: Natacha Ivanova, Sergey Struchev
Music: Edward Nicolay Artemyev
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jane: Julia Ormond
Tolstoy: Oleg Menshikov
McCracken: Richard Harris
Radkov: Alexey Petrenko
Running time -- 176 minutes
MPAA rating:...
- 5/13/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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