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‘The Seagull’ Review: Dir. Michael Mayer (2018)

The Seagull review: Director Michael Mayer’s The Seagull brings together an all-star ensemble featuring the likes of Saoirse Ronan and Annette Bening for the latest take on the acclaimed play of the same name from theatre’s beloved Anton Chekhov.

The Seagull review

The Seagull review

Coming from a theatrical background, having enjoyed many stints in the West End, director Mayer – helming from a script adapted by Tony-winning playwright Stephen Karam – you’d think that he’d be the one to finally tackle the The Seagull (a story of many intertwining relationships and tragedy when an actress and her lover head off to visit her brother) and get it right – for a play that came out in 1896 and has since seen many try to give it a cinematic endeavour worthy of its acclaim, it’s surprising that no has yet succeeded. But apparently not. Mayer’s The Seagull gets a lot right: the perfectly cast ensemble are all terrific dabbling in such iconic roles; the production design and cinematography is gorgeous; the writing is so typically Chekhov.

Related: On Chesil Beach review

The problem is just that the film is very frenetic and confused. It’s too chaotic for its own good in its direction; the camera movements are unnecessarily frantic and fluid and Mayer opts to try to keep this a constantly brisk and busy film.

Theatre adaptations are at their best when they combine that immersive magic of a play with the ability to shoot it and polish it with a camera on a bigger scale and let us linger in the writing and acting. But instead, this iteration of the story feels too convoluted and rushed, as a result, to really build on any of the characters or relationships and so falls very flat instead. It’s also poorly handled on a tone front; Chekhov’s play is such a winning work for getting the tricky balance between comedy and tragedy right but Mayer’s film fails to ride that line and the tonal shifts are often jarring and never quite work as well as they should for the moments to hit like they could.

The Seagull review

Ronan, Bening and Elizabeth Moss are a powerhouse trio as our three leading protagonists though and, for fans of the source material, it’s quite cool getting to see such star-power bring to life such iconic characters. Even Corey Stoll makes an appearance as Trigorin and is, expectedly, brilliant. The performances are great; everyone is perfectly cast and brings their A-game to really realise these characters and the dialogue superbly and there’s some fun t be had in watching their various interactions throughout. Sadly, the film is just too much of a mess to really reign in its focus and develop the characters quite beyond serviceable. They’re there and that’s sort of it.

The performances and the luscious production design and visual crafting of The Seagull save it from completely tarnishing Chekhov’s work but, as far as adaptations go, it’s not the best. The potential is visibly there but its execution misses the point of the material and the film falters for being too busy, clustered, confused and tedious for its own good.

The Seagull review by Awais Irfan, September 2018.

The Seagull is released in UK cinemas from Friday 7th September 2018.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a real passion for movies and for writing. I'm a superhero fanboy at heart; 'The Dark Knight' and 'Days of Future Past' are a couple of my favourites. I'm a big sci-fi fan too - 'Star Wars' has been my inspiration from the start; 'Super 8' is another personal favourite, close to my heart... I love movies. All kinds of movies. Lots of them too.

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