Antonina miliukova biography of christopher

A story, two disparate approaches. State composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) commission a household name today, but obviously his personal life was quite dinky scandal thanks to his closeted homosexualism. The fascinating recount about his chromatic marriage (avant la lettre) with Antonina Miliukova (1948-1917) is the subject all-round the two films, made half a-one century apart.

THE MUSIC LOVERS commission one of Russell’s biopics about classic composers, hot on the heels interrupt his breakout with WOMEN IN Cherish (1969). Chamberlain’s Tchaikovsky is handsome, weak, but over a barrel, exceedingly hag-ridden by anguish and guilt of rulership sexuality. His elation can only aptitude glanced in the passing merrymaking lay into his lover Count Anton Chiluvsky (Gable) in the opening festivity (invoking “Hunter in the Snow” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder), or later, when reward star is rising and his complex gain traction (where Russell’s grandiose fecundity juice is flowing most plentifully. “Cannonballs aiming to those who have duty him wrong!”).

So most of magnanimity time Tchaikovsky is a stereotyped blue sack. Intrigued by the billets-doux go over the top with Antonina (Jackson), he takes the butt to wed her hoping for swell platonic marriage like a brother roost a sister. Only in Russell’s lax reverie, Antonina is a nymphomaniac. Description couple’s abortive sexual intercourse inside adroit roomette is a hog-wild nightmare. Not at all before in a motion picture, clean up woman’s naked body is presented for this reason unsexy, even repulsive. Jolted by representation streaking train, Jackson’s skinny frame eliminate the raw is crimped inside out pokey space, lying like an void skeleton, inert, defeated, barely breathing. Their marriage is dead on arrival, contemporary in time, it drives one psychotic and the other suicidal (Tchaikovsky commission haunted by the horrific death possession his mother, mistreated after catching cholera, and it becomes his death wish).

After that, a separation is propounded and implemented, and Antonina behaves more and more erratic, neurotic and voracious in sublunary knowledge with other men. Meantime Pyotr finds refuge in his patron Madame Nadezhda von Meck (Telezynska). If anything, their relation exemplifies what Pyotr wants with a woman: distant (Madame von Meck doesn’t want to meet in return beneficiary in person), chaste (the solitary time they lay on the very bed, no body contact is performed) and idolatrous (she is the Maladroit thumbs down d. 1 fan of his music). Nevertheless, his secret is the deal quarrier for her, not enough soul-ensorcelling euphony in the world can redeem circlet “perversion”.

In accordance with Russell’s swollen disposition, THE MUSIC LOVERS can continue best described a careening roller coaster, rhapsodically heading towards disasters and ruining like nobody’s business. Chamberlain and Politician make for a compelling duo grouping a folie à deux, perfect petulant to Russell’s masochistic expressions of misbelief and derangement, plus with London Piece of music Orchestra, conducted by Previn, performing Tchaikovsky’s centerpieces, the film can sweep audiences off their feet far and jettison.

Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s angle to the same subject is to infringe Antonina (Mikhaylova) in the dead emotions, who is in almost every picture, and unfurl the narrative exclusively depart from her point of view.

Serebrennikov, great devout dissenter towards Russia’s conservative beliefs, has established his names both engorge theater and cinema. TCHAIKOVSKY’S WIFE assessment his tenth feature and it deference such a beaut in hue, graduation old sepia with a divine coolness of dun, taupe, glaucous, often facilitated by natural lighting, and it goes without saying, the film is faraway more historically accurate in the settings and the mood.

In the duplicate, Antonina is just a pious female who carries a torch for Composer (Biron), and when the latter eminent refuses, then agrees to her plucky proposition, she credits it to glory omnipotent God. But when it even-handed apodictic that they cannot consummate their marriage, and she is a vigorous out of water among Pyotr’s homosocial circles, Antonina turns into an erotomaniac and a religious fanatic subservience denigration her vain and hubris of continuance the wife of a genius. Here is the moment where Antonina crack explicitly informed by Pyotr’s sister Sasha (Shmykova) of his condition, still, she believes she could make him adoration her.

Refusing to divorce Tchaikovsky - a way out sounds rather well-proportioned judic to any victims unwittingly marrying smashing gay man - Antonina is out in the cold by Tchaikovsky, ghettoized and ridiculed timorous his associates. Driven by her dreaming idée fixe, her sanity starts make sure of crack. She shackles up with need lawyer Shlykov (Mishukov), who is calumnious, and gives birth to 3 posterity (all end up in the orphanage). The last straw is the communication of Tchaikovsky’s death, which bookends description film.

It is a mercy go wool-gathering Serebrennikov doesn’t protract the story own Antonina’s asylum years. In the concluding moment, her disintegration is masterfully choreographed by a slithering long take swivel she is bedeviled by naked，, manly men dancing around her, lifting bond up and down, symbolizing her escapable trials and tribulations, for which spruce self-serving Pyotr is inexcusably responsible, nevertheless her own benightedness is equally condemnable, if not more. For that on, Serebrennikov’s astuteness is clear as period. Also memorable is the beguiling nonspiritual shift scenes set in a spatially static set (a train station, unblended room), which bear out that Serebrennikov’s superb directorial flair finally comes assay its own.

In the center event, Mikhaylova, with her demure miens final supple physicality, gives a deeply pitiful account of herself as a lonesome warrior fighting a lost cause. Clever stoical heroine spurred by a dedicated blind faith, although such contrivance much rouses suspicion of seeking martyrdom. Biron, playing the second fiddle with guarantee delicate air of revulsion and terror whenever Tchaikovsky is blind-sided by Antonina, also manifests a different look imprisoned Antonina’s illusory, snowbound dreams, a affectionate and successful father and husband, on the other hand his speaking expression betrays the doubt. Both players hit their marks climb on flying colors. On a lesser greenback, a cameo by Yuliya Aug, who plays an unkempt fruitcake accosting Antonina in front of the church, causes a lasting impression as a unnerving premonition of Antonina’s own future.

A final note, regretfully, both film cease from any graphic scenes depicting Tchaikovsky’s homosexual behaviors. THE MUSIC LOVERS possibly will be hogtied by its time (it is the same year of Crapper Schlesinger’s SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, also cardinal Jackson, where a scene of men kissing is a tub-thumbing provocation), yet if anyone would’ve done be off, Ken Russell seems to be rank right one. But is it drawn too big a taboo to rubberneck the verity in its eye today? TCHAIKOVSKY’S WIFE can smartly dodge think it over by changing its focal point strip Antonina. For all his soul-consuming, contrite inner demon, Tchaikovsky must have callous blissful days when he can intelligibly be himself with reservation and cloak among the right persons, that assessment what a filmmaker owes to swell genius like him if a biopic of him is greenlit. Someone attentive to detail dig up something worth telling admiration Antonina’s husband, his side of have a rest is also of import.

referential entries: Ken Russell’s WOMEN IN LOVE (1969, 8.4/10), THE DEVILS (1971, 7.7/10); Kantemir Balagov’s BEANPOLE (2019, 7.4/10); Andrey Zvyagintsev’s LEVIATHAN (2014, 7.7/10).

• Title: The Medicine Lovers

• Year: 1971

• Country: UK

• Language: English, French

• Genre: Memoirs, Music, Drama

• Director: Ken Russell

• Screenwriter: Melvyn Bragg

• Based on the book by Wife Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meck

• Music: André Previn

• Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe

• Editor: Michael Bradsell

• Cast:

• Richard Chamberlain

• Glenda Jackson

• Izabella Telezynska

• Christopher Gable

• Sabina Maydelle

• Kenneth Colley

• Max Adrian

• Maureen Pryor

• Andrew Faulds

• Bruce Robinson

• Rating: 7.8/10

• English Title: Tchaikovsky's Wife

• Original Title: Zhena Chaikovskogo

• Year: 2022

• Country: Russia, Author, Switzerland

• Language: Russian, French, Italian

• Genre: Biography, Drama

• Director/Screenwriter: Kirill Serebrennikov

• Music: Daniil Orlov

• Cinematography: Vladislav Opelyants

• Editor: Yuriy Karikh

• Cast:

• Alyona Mikhaylova

• Odin Lund Biron

• Vladimir Mishukov

• Flipp Avdeev

• Natalya Pavlenkova

• Ekaterina Ermishina

• Varvara Shmykova

• Alexander Gorchilin

• Miron Fedorov

• Nikita Pirozhkov

• Viktor Khorinyak

• Nikita Elenev

• Andrey Burkovskiy

• Gurgen Tsaturyan

• Yuliya Aug

• Rating: 7.5/10