Onegin

Ralph Fiennes, Liv Tyler

Lush adaptation of the story by Pushkin.

We follow Onegin throughout but he is such an asshole it can't help but effect our reaction to the film. For the first half he is a disaffected, jaded spoiled brat who could use a good thrashing. Then he inexplicably falls in love with LT after rejecting her earlier. But there was nothing about her which would justify his dropping his entire personna.

There is a light dash of social consciousness but falls far short of the soul-searching we find in Tolstoy. The book is an indictment of the stratified, calcified society of 19th century Russia but in the film those ideas are kept in the background so we can focus entirely on this non-existent love story.

Well-crafted but unsatisfying.

5