Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I sympathise with the Russian poster who took exception with Mamet's tampering with Chekhov but I still admire this film a great deal. As a non-Russian and non-Russian speaker I have loved Chekhov since the time I was able to distinguish great writing from mediocre and I have always felt that no matter how fine a given translation I was still losing the occasional untranslatable nuance to which Russian speakers have access. Vanya is also one of my favourite Chekhov plays and I just wallowed in this wonderful version. It's magical the way that once inside the rehearsal space with the actors schmoozing Wally Shawn stretches out on a bench almost imperceptibly and Larry Pine asks Phoebe Brand casually how long they've known each other and unless you really know Chekhov you'd think this was just actor small-talk instead of the first lines in the play between the Doctor and Nanny,or, to put it another way, Malle has led us both artfully and seamlessly into the performance and then, having done so, he throws in a touch of the Brechts by deliberately reminding us we're watching actors acting and not people living. The first time he tips his glove is via Wally Shawn's cup which has I Love NY written on it then later Andre explains to the visitors (who, I suspect, have been planted there for just that purpose) that it's now a different time. The acting throughout is beyond praise and a wonderful high note for Louis Malle to end his career. 10 out of 10 going away.

"Uncle Vanya" is a wonderful bare bones adaptation of one of the theater's classic plays. Let's face it, the average American who had to read Checkov in some required high school English class, was probably bored to tears. Same with Ibsen, Shakespeare, O'Neill, and any other classic dramatist.Mamet's adaptation gives us a "Vanya" that has truths that are universally identifiable. We can easily sympathize or empathize with all of the characters. This "toned down" version is perfect for getting the audience absorbed without having to rely on costumes or Russian settings.Malle is at his best with this film. He tells the story simply, and allows his actors to take the time to find truth in the moment. Though you know that you are watching a presentation of a play, it never feels "staged" to the point of being false.The acting is magnificent, all the way around. Larry Pine shines as the doctor who is a friend to Vanya. Julianne Moore is wonderful as the woman whom Vanya and the Doctor love.My only problem with the film was the casting of Wallace Shawn as Vanya. His whiny voice and too often closed eyes irritated me to the point where I found his scenes difficult to watch.This says a lot about the other performances and other aspects of the film. That to have a pivotal character be miscast, and yet find the rest of the film compelling, is a credit to the others involved.

A group of New York actors go to a 42nd Street theatre and rehearse their production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. The result is an interesting experiment, though still a novelty film.Many reviewers here have claimed that they got completely into the play, and forgot they were only watching a group of characters rehersing Vanya. I rather thought its success was the way it operated half as actors rehersing Vanya, half as the action of Chekhov's play itself - and the way Malle vascillated every now and then between which reality was stronger. The two most effective moments in it for me were...(spoilers - these two bits are nicer as surprises)When all of a sudden we hear a voiceover - we hear a character's thoughts. This isn't part of the rehersal. The audience inside the theatre don't hear this - only the audience of the movie, me, hear it. This moment suddenly zoomed me into the action of the play... and for a while after had me wondering, okay, is this stuff really happening? Is this play real? The other one, of course, as zetes mentioned, is the cup saying "I love NY," which zooms us into the reality of the artifice, the performance.(end spoilers)I didn't think the rehersal was perfect, though. It may be better than any Chekhov anyone has seen, but it still had the artifact of any translated play, particularly Russian ones, of dialogue which is impossible to make sound anything but theatrical, actors reading lines. No single line of dialogue here is something an english-speaker would say. It just doesn't sound natural - so, no - i don't think it works completely as action, and therefore i was always aware of the artifice, the performance - and the value of this very quickly wore off, and i got very bored. For it to completely work, you have to get into the action of the play - and i don't think it succeeds at that.I was always aware of both levels of reality - never completely in both of them - which is an achievement as a novelty - but its novelty had worn off very quickly before its two hour running time ran out.3/5. Julianne Moore virtually carries this film on her shoulders, by the way. She's magnificent.

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!