3 movies you should see in May
Our film critic Peter Rainer recommends titles including "The Seagull" and "On Chesil Beach."
Billy Howle (L.) and Saoirse Ronan star in 'On Chesil Beach.'
Courtesy of Robert Viglasky/Bleecker Street
An adaptation of a classic Anton Chekhov play and a story about women working on a farm in World War I France are two of the best movies to have been released this month, according to Monitor film critic Peter Rainer.
'The Guardians' beautifully portrays the dynamics of a family farm in WWI France
Xavier Beauvois鈥檚 marvelous new film, 鈥淭he Guardians,鈥� which takes place in France over five years beginning in 1915, is set almost entirely on a family-owned farm.聽Hortense (Nathalie Baye), the family鈥檚 matriarch, has a son-in-law in the war, Clovis (Olivier Rabourdin), who is married to Hortense鈥檚 daughter, Solange (Laura Smet). Also on the front lines are Hortense鈥檚 two sons, Constant (Nicolas Giraud) and Georges (Cyril Descours). To help with the harvesting, Hortense hires a pious, dutiful 20-year-old orphan, Francine (Iris Bry).
Beauvois, who co-wrote the screenplay with Fr茅d茅rique Moreau and Marie-Julie Maille based on a 1924 novel by Ernest P茅rochon, presents the dailiness of farm life through its seasons with an unhurried grace. Although some of the imagery, beautifully captured by cinematographer Caroline Champetier, derives directly from the paintings of Jean-Fran莽ois Millet and the work of such filmmakers as Marcel Pagnol and Jean Renoir, I never felt as if he was aestheticizing the arduousness of the life put before us.聽Beauvois has a seismic sensitivity to the ordeals faced by enclosed communities in wartime. Grade: A- (Rated R for some violence and sexuality.)
'The Seagull' offers strong performances, Chekhovian sorrow
In most Anton Chekhov plays, none more so than 鈥淭he Seagull,鈥� everybody is in love 鈥� but with the wrong people. The latest film adaptation of 鈥淭he Seagull,鈥� directed by Michael Mayer and adapted by Stephen Karam, does a creditable job of orchestrating Chekhov鈥檚 sorrowful romantic roundelay (although the decision to open with the final scene and then flash back is an unnecessary harbinger).
The best reason to check out the film is for Saoirse Ronan鈥檚 tender, wrenching performance as the lovelorn Nina, and, especially, for Annette Bening鈥檚 fantastic turn as Irina, the grand dame of the Russian theater whose most tumultuous work occurs offstage. Bening is capable of being waspish, consoling, frail, indomitable, and woebegone 鈥� sometimes all at once. She turns 鈥淭he Seagull鈥� into a play about the hellish sacrifices one makes for art.聽Grade: B+ (Rated PG-13 for some mature thematic elements, a scene of violence, drug use, and partial nudity.)
'On Chesil Beach' tells a tragic story of crossed love
Ian McEwan鈥檚 resoundingly melancholy 2007 novel 鈥淥n Chesil Beach,鈥� set mostly in 1962, has been respectfully adapted by McEwan, acting as screenwriter, and Dominic Cooke, a renowned English theater director making his movie debut.
The film, which stars聽Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle,聽opens with the lead-up to the couple's wedding night in an old Georgian hotel on a rather remote stretch of Chesil Beach in Dorset, England.聽From there it cuts back and forth between scenes of their courtship and the disastrous way in which that connubial night plays out.
The filmmakers erred, I think, by attaching a coda to the proceedings that sentimentalizes what we鈥檝e just witnessed. And in general, the flashback structure is too herky-jerky for the film鈥檚 more delicate emotional modulations. But the power of the couple's final face-off is so wrenching that none of these cavils matter very much. Grade: B+ (Rated R for strong sex references, violence, and gore.)