An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano

A summer day at a country estate. Anna Petrovna, a general's widow, is receiving her guests: neighbours, relatives, a doctor, and Platonov the schoolmaster. Amid the food, the wine and the courtesy, Platonov realises that Anna is the person he knew and loved years ago. As the evening goes on everyone's mask of politeness falls, and Platonov declares at the top of his voice that his life has been a failure. Nikita Mikhalkov directs. The source is Anton Chekhov's early play Platonov, which Mikhalkov combined with pieces of other Chekhov stories. The subject is doing nothing. Every character is planning something, everyone once had an ideal, and all of them are sitting at the same table talking; Chekhov's shape is kept exactly. The best thing in it is the ensemble work. The camera moves inside the crowd, the talk overlaps, and the dramatic information passes in the background. Alexander Kalyagin plays Platonov; the performance carries the film, and his collapse in the last section is among the frequently cited moments in Soviet cinema. The music is by Eduard Artemyev, and the player piano of the title stands inside the narrative as an object. Who it is for: viewers who like Chekhov adaptations and seventies Soviet cinema. Who it is not for: nothing happens, the film rests entirely on talk, and none of the characters is sympathetic.