To
the haunting and sentimental music of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky,
Michael Cacoyannis has directed a masterful cinematic production
of Anton Chekhov's 1904 play The Cherry Orchard. The
plot is much less complicated than the character studies,
so the cinematic version is particularly impressive due to
fine acting, costuming, and magnificent sets. Checkov's aim
was to demonstrate how social change impacts ordinary and
extraordinary persons in ways for which they are often totally
unprepared. In 1861 Tsar Aleksandr II emancipated the serfs,
thereby freeing some forty million peasants from the requirement
to work for the nobility and to live on their lands. As a
result, the nobles lost the economic entitlement to whatever
their lands produced, and the unskilled serfs were forced
to sell their labor in an uncertain labor market. In The
Cherry Orchard matriarch Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya
(played by Charlotte Rampling) returns home to her mortgaged
ancestral estate virtually penniless, as her husband in Paris
has run off with the family fortune as well as another woman.
Meanwhile, Lopakhin (played by Owen Teale), a former serf
on her land, has accumulated a vast fortune as a capitalist.
Since Lyubov cannot pay the taxes on the land, the government
is taking steps to foreclose and then to auction off the property,
including the magnificent cherry orchard, which is in full
bloom. Lopakhin urges Lyubov to lease the property on which
the cherry orchard is located, thus providing more than enough
funds to pay off the mortgage and to live comfortably; he
then plans to build summer dachas, which will make a tidy
profit for him. Lyubov, however, believes that leasing the
land and chopping down the cherry trees to build houses would
be too "vulgar," so she instead allows events to
take their course. Lopakhin eventually buys the estate at
the government auction, including the cherry orchard. Each
member of Lyubov's family as well as her servants adjust to
the situation in a variety of ways, so the plot consists largely
of a series of psychological studies, which culminate in a
very emotional and extended farewell scene. In the end, Lopakhin
is overjoyed at owning the estate on which his forebears were
serfs, Lyubov has a lot of money to spend at her new residence
in Paris, but their aging faithful servant Feers (played by
Michael Gough) no longer has a purpose in living and feels
that he has really not had an opportunity to enjoy a life.
Chekhov has written about the end of the feudal era and the
triumph of the capitalist economy, where rubles instead of
refinement have become the measure of humanity. MH
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