Hollywood and art house: the two basic forms of contemporary cinema. One of them tends towards being entertainment and escapist-oriented; the other delights in exploring the vagaries and trials of real life. It takes an artist to make 'real life' entertaining, especially if the film in question is dealing with flat and grey matters like the everyday disappointment of expectations. Two recent British films seem to me however to have hit the authentically Chekhovian note: one of them Joanna Hogg's 'Archipelago', the other being the film under review, an Anglo-Russian production directed by Anna Tchernakova.
Marina, the heroine of 'Season of Mists', is, like the director herself, an expatriated Russian living in the West, and one of the questions the film asks rather subtly is whether it is possible to have a fulfilled life in a country that isn't one's own. (The same question, as a matter of fact, that Tarkovsky was asking in 'Nostalghia'.) Language comes into the matter, but also the genius of the locality. Tchernakova makes a good job of showing how rural south Leicestershire is the most ordinary place on earth - yes, even downright boring - but at the same time magical and wonderful, and imbued with misty poetic grace.
So, why wouldn't you want to live there - especially if you were happily married? That's the question. True love tends to cut through every dilemma, but, although living companionably enough with her garage-mechanic Welsh husband Gregory (a nice performance by Ifan Huw Dafydd), one pretty soon gets the feeling he doesn't come near to fulfilling Marina's highest and deepest ideals. Thus, when along comes a party of Russian musicians - quarrelsome, talkative and fond of the bottle - of course she falls for one of them: it is inevitable. Since this is a film rather than a piece of theatre (or indeed a television play) we can actually go to Moscow with Marina, and take another look around at her birth place. What a lot of life there is in the city, compared to sweet little middle-class England! But is it the right kind of life? And what does one mean by 'a lot of life' anyway? The temptations inherent in the situation are nicely and evenly drawn by Tchernakova. We watch with fascination our heroine trying to make up her mind at the onset of a ferocious mid-life crisis (it makes it more piquant that a child or, rather, children, are involved). Should she obey the promptings of desire (such promptings may after all be merely temporary), or settle for what she has - knowing, or fearing, that in doing so she is opting for second best? Such is the dilemma the movie hinges upon, with some freshly-observed secondary characters, just to make the situation complicated and interesting. Whatever happens, it is not going to be a conventional happy ending. But are we left therefore with an inevitably 'tragic' ending? This is how the film seems to me to be very clever. Often, in life, we simply don't know what our blessings are - or whether indeed blessings come into the matter.Is the colour of life grey, or is it silver? Or both at the same time? Are we - in this film - in spring or in autumn? And what would Chekhov have made of Marina?
Marina, the heroine of 'Season of Mists', is, like the director herself, an expatriated Russian living in the West, and one of the questions the film asks rather subtly is whether it is possible to have a fulfilled life in a country that isn't one's own. (The same question, as a matter of fact, that Tarkovsky was asking in 'Nostalghia'.) Language comes into the matter, but also the genius of the locality. Tchernakova makes a good job of showing how rural south Leicestershire is the most ordinary place on earth - yes, even downright boring - but at the same time magical and wonderful, and imbued with misty poetic grace.
So, why wouldn't you want to live there - especially if you were happily married? That's the question. True love tends to cut through every dilemma, but, although living companionably enough with her garage-mechanic Welsh husband Gregory (a nice performance by Ifan Huw Dafydd), one pretty soon gets the feeling he doesn't come near to fulfilling Marina's highest and deepest ideals. Thus, when along comes a party of Russian musicians - quarrelsome, talkative and fond of the bottle - of course she falls for one of them: it is inevitable. Since this is a film rather than a piece of theatre (or indeed a television play) we can actually go to Moscow with Marina, and take another look around at her birth place. What a lot of life there is in the city, compared to sweet little middle-class England! But is it the right kind of life? And what does one mean by 'a lot of life' anyway? The temptations inherent in the situation are nicely and evenly drawn by Tchernakova. We watch with fascination our heroine trying to make up her mind at the onset of a ferocious mid-life crisis (it makes it more piquant that a child or, rather, children, are involved). Should she obey the promptings of desire (such promptings may after all be merely temporary), or settle for what she has - knowing, or fearing, that in doing so she is opting for second best? Such is the dilemma the movie hinges upon, with some freshly-observed secondary characters, just to make the situation complicated and interesting. Whatever happens, it is not going to be a conventional happy ending. But are we left therefore with an inevitably 'tragic' ending? This is how the film seems to me to be very clever. Often, in life, we simply don't know what our blessings are - or whether indeed blessings come into the matter.Is the colour of life grey, or is it silver? Or both at the same time? Are we - in this film - in spring or in autumn? And what would Chekhov have made of Marina?