User reviews

I do understand that any film director has an own vision, but o my God!!!, this is an example of "misunderstanding" of Pushkin's poetry! First of all, the music used in the movie has nothing to do with Pushkin's time (XVIII-XIX century). Olga's song (Oh the Viburnum Blooms) is a very popular Soviet song written in 1949. The main theme of the movie is an interpretation of "On The Hills Of Manchuria" written in 1906 to memory of those who died during war with Japan, updated with gypsy guitar in this movie. Pushkin died in 1837, there is no way the movie's music corresponds to the Russian XVIII-XIX century culture or the poem's characters. Secondly, the most important elements of the poem like Tatiana's letter to Onegin, for example, are washed out of the movie. Tatiana is a 17-years old girl in love, the all her passion is in that letter!!! Then, why this movie is so dark? If authors thought about the poem as a tragedy (I associate the darkness with tragedy), then Tatiana shouldn't had to be married to such a handsome fellow like Martin Donovan in the movie. Based on the book,her husband was old and badly injured during a war. I stop criticizing the movie here, as there are different opinions and some of them a quite positive.

A deadly interpretation of Aleksandr Pushkin's vibrant tale of an urbane, cynical youth conquered by a country girl of valor. In the original poem, the fine Tatiana, once spurned by Onegin, ends up married to a fat, middle-aged general. In this Anglicized take, she ends up with a dashing young soldier. Nearly all the characterizations are wrong. Tatiana's mother is bloodless where she should be warm; the sister is noble where she should be a coquette. And Onegin is simply old and tired. Only Liv Tyler comes halfway close to the spirit of Tatiana.

The original story is arguably the best piece of Russian literature. As such it presents a multifaceted reflection of Russian life of early nineteenth century and a compelling drama told lucidly with wit and subtlety.

None can be applied to the movie we have to see. We are fed with ignorant clichés, belabored with shameless vulgarity and sodomized with lies that not just alter, but plainly kill the original story.

Creators of the movie clearly deem their viewers to be incapable of subtlety. And they approach their audience as cunning salesmen whose task is to sell a cheap kitsch as a treasured masterpiece. Pushkin also could not rely on his readers' developed taste. But his novel lifted his readers up, this movie on the contrary, dumbs down the original to the level of the viewers.

The movie cannot possibly be worse than it is.