robertozerov

Strengths: setting 10 - fantastic 19thC Russia feeling w/dachas, feasts, serfs, balls, nature; Acting, directing, Russian dialogue, costumes, theme of cynicism & bourgeois pettiness all good; English subtitles occasionally errant but sufficient; HOWEVER, editing 2; As long as the Russian War And Peace but doesn't warrant it. 6+ hours could have produced a more dramatic 3-4 hour film by compressing the incidents w/o sacrificing the philosophy. Still, very worth it.

Dame Maggie again proves she's #1... SUBTLY. Her genius turns nothing-new aging, alcoholism, hopelessness & even plotlessness into an exposee of the all-too-common life of waste. What could have been a who-cares downer confronts the autopilot in us all. Viewers must speculate on an ending for Judith - & for themselves, because "happy" closure is absent. Hollywood ignored this one: the budget was too low, it wasn't a blockbuster & it was too cerebral. Maggie should have won her 3rd Oscar, a film among the English language's 200 best.

As has happened so many times with the Oscars, another great film-actor-ensemble has been neglected. Recognised nearly universally as the ultimate test of an actor's craft, Paul Scofield as Lear in this 1971 version could be deified for his performance, even more complex than his Oscar-winning Thomas More in 1966's best pic "A Man For All Seasons". Viewing this film should be a prerequisite not just for R.A.D.A. acting students. Incorporating as he did the essence of Lear so organically, Scofield sadly was not even nominated, another nod to the lowest common denominator public taste. This review, nearly forty years after the pic's release, was an on-the-spot spontaneous impulse after yet another viewing of the film. People are afraid of Shakespeare(a.l.a. DeVere); don't be. All, but especially any pained by their own offspring, will turn away from the screen with much more than a penny's worth of thought and a rediscovery of the art of Paul Scofield and ensemble. It is a cliché, but they just don't make movies like this one anymore.