Erika Christensen, Maria Bello and Mary Stuart Masterson. This is a good week for independent cinema though the majority of the movie-going world may not realize it in the wake of the ongoing summer blitzkrieg (The Da Vinci Code will get my assessment next week). It would be a shame, however, for cinema-philes to overlook The Sisters, an excellent reason for heading over to your local art house.
Has ever such a photogenic cast performed Chekhov? Albeit, it’s ersatz Chekhov, which Richard Alfieri’s The Sisters most definitely is. Alfieri has written the screenplay for a film based on his play which, in turn, of course, was inspired by Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, and it has been directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman, a veteran of TV movies and series. Both are working with a set of lovely bones that include Maria Bello, Mary Stuart Masterson, Erika Christensen, Chris O’Donnell, Tony Goldwyn, Alessandro Nivola, and Eric ‘Will & Grace’ McCormack as the Beaver … er as Gary Sokol, the frustrated suitor of the youngest sister. Oh, and Rip Torn plays the doddering professor who looks in on the proceedings.
It’s not often these days that a movie can rely on words alone, as The Sisters can, to satisfy a petulant, impatient audience. Even the art-house crowd has become accustomed to gimmick pictures (Brick, Yes, Memento) to disguise their essential talkiness or present-day settings to disguise their classical roots. These modern updates usually wear thin for me, though they have the linguistic beauty of the source material. But the present-day retelling of The Sisters—with Masha becoming Marcia, Olga transformed into a lesbian and Irene suffering from crystal meth addiction—made perfect sense to me. The latter, especially, seemed a canny way to show Irene’s reaction to the stifling weight of her elder sister’s insistence on trying to shield her from the dangers of life.
The framework of the story is the same—the three sisters, each in the midst of psychological transformations following the death of their overbearing father and loaded up with secrets galore—gather to celebrate several family occasions and recall their supposedly blissful childhood. They barely acknowledge their unassuming brother Andrew (Nivola), have spite for his slatternly intended who they look down upon (Elizabeth Banks from last year’s Heights), and either scorn or ignore their husbands and would-be suitors—until, of course, the brother makes an announcement that threatens to rip the family apart.
Marcia (Bello), the ‘mad’ one, suffers from an uncontrolled passion for honesty and delivers her scathing pronouncements with a minimum of fuss. Bello has become the critics’ darling for her work in a number of roles in independent films, and adds another devastating portrait to her gallery. Masha/Marcia is a tricky, tricky part and Bello walks the tightrope with authority and subtlety. An inch to the right and the character is a bitter, strident harpy spoiling every scene she’s in (which is just about all of them). In Bello’s hands, we stand back with pleasure and await her next monologue.
Olga (Masterson) is the peacekeeper who the others at times have accused of being cold and closed off, but Masterson, who has grown as an actor as she has grown out of adolescent parts (she held her own in Broadway’s revival of Nine a few years back, and lesbians loved her in Fried Green Tomatoes) does well with her moment in the spotlight—as she describes the derision her family has lobbed at her each time she’s proclaimed her love for a woman until finally she’s shut down. Sweet Irene (Christensen) is just trying to assert herself against the two powerhouses that are her sisters. And Banks, as Andrew’s fiancée, utilizing one of those Joy-zee accent, relishes the part.
The men in the piece are really there to support the women and set them up for their great monologues. The exception, of course is Gary Sokol (McCormack), who is supposedly a good friend of the family but spends his time throwing poison darts into every conversation, all the while pining for Irene.
‘Father said we should be four hearts beating in one body—didn’t he?’ Irene asks her sisters and brother during one of the piece’s emotional crises. Though Olga, Marcia, Irene, and Andrew rarely achieve that lofty emotional ambition during the course of the movie, the movie does.
The Sisters plays exclusively for one week at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema, www.landmarktheatres.com,
See www.knightatthemovies.com.