IMDb's usual volk-sillyness
[quote] After helming Second Class Citizens in 2001, something of a cross between Three Stories and Asthenic Syndrome, concerning a woman who poisons her abusive boyfriend, stuffs his body in the case, and wonders the streets with it, Muratova took on one of her most interesting and unusual projects. Chekhov's Motives is an adaptation of Chekhov's play Tatiana Repina and his short story Difficult People. The film begins in usual Muratova style. The bickering family in a small Russian village consists of a despotic father, his obedient wife, their two small children, and their eldest, very effeminate son. The son is a student who came to the village to ask his parents for money. The first half hour of the film shows them arguing over the money, with Muratova pushing her style to the extreme, as in one scene where the mother repeats the same phrase almost a dozen times. Then, as the son runs out of the house, he walks into a wedding organised by Russian nouveau riches in the old church in the village, with an overweight opera singer groom and a zombie-like bride. For the next hour Muratova shows the entire process of a Russian Orthodox marriage in real time and with such attention to detail, it would make Tsai Ming-liang run out of the theatre. As ignorant rich people suffer through the marital process, the film seems to be making a statement about trivialisation of spirituality in Russian society, in the vein of Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) or Sokurov's Second Circle (1990).
Yet there is something more interesting going on. In Chekhov's Motives, both the characters in the film and the audience watching the film in a movie theatre are basically having the same experience. Muratova is comparing wedding guests who can't wait to leave, but stay for the prestige of attending the ceremony, with a lot of her own audience, who might not enjoy watching her films but watch them out of pure vanity, only to have the satisfaction of having another "difficult" film under their belt. And because the sequence is so long, the audience of the film becomes more and more self aware, and the comparison with the film's idiotic guests becomes more obvious, making the satire more biting. There is also something more serious about this strategy. In adapting Chekhov's play, Muratova makes interesting points about the differences and similarities between theatre and cinema. The audience of the film who are separated from the action of the film by the screen are forced to compare themselves to the wedding guests who share the same space with their "performers". Thus, the film ceases to be just a filmed play and becomes an intertextual exercise, close to the work of Manoel de Oliveira, erasing some of the lines between theatre and cinema, while creating others.
[ http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/ ... atova.html ][/quote]
[quote]Chekhov's Motifs (Kira Muratova 2002)-DVDRip-Separate EnFrEs Subs-CD1.avi, 700Mb
video: 608x464 01:22:27 25fps DivX 1Mbps
audio: 48KHz 01:22:27 Stereo 167Kbps mp3
Chekhov's Motifs (Kira Muratova 2002)-DVDRip-Separate EnFrEs Subs-CD2.avi, 294Mb
video: 608x464 00:35:41 25fps DivX 985Kbps
audio: 48KHz 00:35:41 Stereo 155Kbps mp3
Kira - Documentary about Kira Muratova-Separated En-Fr-Es Subs.avi, 371Mb
video: 464x360 00:47:55 25fps DivX 900Kbps
audio: 48KHz 00:47:56 Stereo 171Kbps mp3[/quote]
Not a blatant masterpiece as Astenicheskiy Sindrom, but probably more accessible... and I loved it, anyway.
But you don't have to trust me, just listen to uncle Sokurov:
(Btw, I was away a couple of days, a global thank-you to everyone for all the files released in the meantime
. Thanks!)
THE MOVIE:
Chekhov's Motifs (Kira Muratova 2002)-DVDRip-Separate EnFrEs Subs-CD1.avi 
Chekhov's Motifs (Kira Muratova 2002)-DVDRip-Separate EnFrEs Subs-CD2.avi THE LITTLE DOCU:
Kira - Documentary about Kira Muratova-Separated En-Fr-Es Subs.avi English, French and (weird) Spanish SUBS:
Chekhov's Motifs (Kira Muratova 2002)-DVDRip-EnFrEs Subs.zip Kira - Documentary about Kira Muratova-En-Fr-Es Subs.zip Better SPANISH subs (by Shimoda
):Subs Kira Spanish
Subs Chekhov's Motifs Spanish
