I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Now here's something you don't see everyday: a movie that opens as if like a documentary, then going right into a cast of characters doing a full rehearsal of a Chekhov play, Uncle Vanya, with only a few little breaks here and there to fully remind the audience "hey, this is still a bunch of 'real' people not even putting on but preparing to put on a play." Vanya on 42nd Street is something of a revelation in translating theater to film, or rather theater AS cinema, or vise-versa. As an audience watching an adaptation of a play we're often used to seeing a play taken from its roots on the stage to film, its realistic recreation presented live to an audience as an event where the spontaneity of life occurs from moment to moment without a break, fleshed out by way of the devices of the cinematic language (lighting, different focal points and shots, editing, music cues).In the case of Vanya on 42nd Street we're watching a play take shape- at first slightly awkwardly, since I had never read or seen the play performed I wasn't even quite sure when the characters were starting to talk in the Chekhov language out of their own actors-playing characters voices- and we should be drawn in like a usual theater crowd. And we are, or at least I was, thanks to the very powerful and moving performances and the inherent wonders to be found in Chekhov's text. But Louis Malle plays around a little bit, or rather more than just a little bit. Because of the placement of the camera in certain scenes, and as it is a play rehearsed in a decrepit theater on 42nd street, we see an actor here and there in the background watching as a scene which is supposed to be taking place with just two of the characters in play, and something like this small touch creates something else to the process. The process of doing this play, even as a rehearsal, is kind of in the background of how the movie works as a *movie*, not as theater.If this sounds a little complicated a dissection, it should be noted that Malle, a man who made many films and had this as his final film before he was taken away so suddenly, knows the essential thing is important: put on a great production of a play. And it works, fully: we're sucked into this story of a family in Russia torn apart by their love, or disconnect from it, mistrust, loneliness, bitterness, despair, and moments that ponder the very reason why we even go on living when things look to be the worst (the final speech given by Vanya's daughter played by Brooke Smith, should be considered a mini-masterpiece of the written word with it starting with "All we can do is live."). It's about wasted lives, or chances that have gone by for some, like Wallace Shawn's title character, for over half of a lifetime.So Chekhov fans, of whom there are quite a few in the theater world, won't be disappointed in the least by the presentation. It's a best-of-both-worlds piece of art; we get the wonderful essentials of what it all comes down to in the world of theater as actors (such as Julianne Moore and Shawn and Smith who are all fantastic, sometimes nearing genius), totally in tune and prepared with this heavy work of intelligently gut-ripping familial drama, are revealed though Malle's careful and sometimes very subtle documentary approach. It's a double edged sword: we're watching a play, yes, but there's something else about watching theater as process, as something that evolves along, that is captured as well, which is something rare (maybe one other film, Bergman's minor but great work, After the Rehearsal, has this quality).But at the same time, Louis Malle is directing a film that is fictional, and we are forced to still see things a certain way, to see real film lights hitting on what is supposed to be a "realistic" setting, and editing directing our eyes where to go in a big confrontation and with actors and their eyelines and the 180 degree rule and so on. There's even a very tricky moment I wasn't sure at first that I liked: in the second half there's a moment where Moore's character is thinking something to herself, about getting angry, about saying something she feels to Vanya or someone (i.e. the "mermaid" bit). Up until now we've seen these actors relatively in naturalistic conditions in terms of their own audience- the actors' dress rehearsal is being seen by a few guests- but this suddenly takes into consideration narration, and we're reminded it is all really a film.I'm still not sure if this completely fits, but it's such a bold moment that I respect it all the same. Vanya on 42nd Street is an immensely stimulating experience both as pure drama and as an intellectual rendering of what theater and film represents as art forms. And as a final feature from a director like Malle is a very fine achievement; I'm tempted to say that, even imperfect as it is, it's sort of timeless in its approach to a 19th century Russian play. 9.5/10

Louis Malle made "My Dinner With Andre" about two old buddies, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, who meet and have a long conversation over dinner. The film is about that conversation and nothing much else. It was dominated by Andre Gregory's ridiculous New Age mumbo-jumbo.In "Vanya on 42nd Street" Malle has brought Shawn and Gregory together again on screen and the results are predictably risible. Luckily, there's more to look at than just Shawn and Gregory - there is at least Julianne Moore. The rest of the cast are mostly familiar 3rd-rate faces, giving rather good performances, all the while presided over by Gregory with his prayer beads.Malle seems to be trying to explode the prevailing notion that actors should look good if they are to arouse our complicity. Aside from Moore, none of these actors has a particularly watchable face. And Wallace Shawn has a speech impediment.The mistake, I believe, that Malle and Shawn and Gregory have made is trying to make this beautiful play sound like it was written yesterday, about people we live next door to. Nowhere is there the slightest belief that we, the audience, are capable of the act of imagination that watching Chekhov unadulterated (i.e., a play written and set in early 20th-century Russia) requires. The only thing the film illuminates is "what a falling off was there" (what Hamlet says of the contrast between a portrait of his father and one of his uncle). How terribly little Shawn and Gregory have made these wonderful people seem! At times the actors sounded like they were talking to Dr Phil."Vanya on 42nd Street" is obviously yet another Shawn/Gregory silly dinner, only this time they were eating poor Chekhov.

If anything in life is certain it is that if you didn't like Louis Malle's "My Dinner with Andre" you won't like his "Vanya on 42nd Street. But even this cannot be entirely depended on, because if you have matured as a movie viewer since seeing "Andre", you might find yourself unexpectedly able to appreciate "Vanya".Both films are superficially minimalist, relying on script and acting talent to entertain, although Malle's shot selection is also an important element of Vanya. The only real effect is a recorded voice-over sequence for Julianne Moore's character Yelana. As the voice-over plays Yelana's thoughts, the camera is tight on her face and Moore's facial expressions must subtly mirror her thoughts. This is a routine "film" device but in this stage-film context it provides Malle an opportunity to simultaneously utilize the best of both mediums. Acting for camera is different than acting for the stage, particularly in the degree of expression dimension. In this sequence Moore must act for the camera while pretending to be acting for a theater audience. I think this was the best sequence in the film, tight shots like this are an area where the film performance is more demanding than a live stage performance.The opening scenes of "Vanya on 42nd Street" suggest "My Dinner with Andre", as each member of the scattered ensemble makes their way through the crowded streets of Manhattan for a rehearsal at the rundown New Amsterdam Theater. Once inside they exchange casual conversation and before we realize it the play has started. The lighting has been subtly altered and a large table on the stage has become a sitting room on a rural estate in Russia. But this is not a dress rehearsal and the cast performs in their street clothes.The subject of Anton Chekhov's late 19th century play is what use should we make of our lives? The deeper subject is the moment of introspection when one confronts the fear that they have wasted theirs. Some complain that since the play is a translation from Russian and is over 100 years old, it reflects a culture too foreign to be of relevance today. While they are correct about regular reminders that the setting is not contemporary, you just as regularly find yourself surprised that Chekhov's subject and theme are so universal and timeless.During Sonya's long monologue to close the film (perfectly handled by Brooke Smith who literally glows from the moment you see her in the first crowd scene) I was reminded of Virginia Woolf's likewise introspective "Mrs. Dalloway"-written 30 years later in England. Sonya closes the play by expressing her hopes that while we can do nothing but endure in this life, at least we may find a perfect mercy beyond the grave. Clarissa Dalloway looks through a bookshop window to find the passage "Fear no more the heat o' the sun/Nor the furious winter's rages".

I'm baffled by all the praise this film has received.I'm guessing the director's choice to forego sets and costumes was intended to enable the actors and audience to focus in on and explore the inner world of the characters. But that's just wrong-headed. Human beings aren't fully alive unless they are interacting with (or passionately rejecting) the world around them. What would Neil Simon's characters be without New York, New York?Without the sets and costumes, this production of Uncle Vanya has an airless quality to it that eventually leads to a suffocating case of boredom. There is no sense of time or place (at least not in the first half hour I watched before giving up on it), so the behaviour of the characters seems to be severely stifled (and not merely by whatever social mores the characters are supposedly constrained by).Contrast this with the wonderful My Dinner With Andre, which had a very specific time and place, and which the director regularly reminded us of with interruptions by waiters. Imagine what that production would have been like if Gregory and Shawn had performed the entire thing on stools against a black backdrop, with no interruptions. Yikes!