Customer Reviews

The Sisters

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Chekhov's coutryman Leo Tolstoy said that "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Maybe so, the Prior/Prozorov family is certainly unhappy (and as some negative reviews have indicated, insufferable) in a way many of us would hope to avoid, but their pain is nevertheless accessible in this story.

Anyone considering this film should go in knowing that it deals with a painful story of wounded souls. If you're not up for the genre, pass on this out of hand. It starts off sad and gets sadder. Hey, it's Chekhov for goodness sake. And speaking of Chekhov, it's theatre, so be prepared for the mannered dialog and the fact that most of the story takes place on a single set.

Everyone in the cast turns in a top-notch and complex performance that allows the viewer to have compassion for characters one would most wish to avoid in real life. As Donald Rumsfeld might say, you go through life with the family you have, not the family you'd wish to have.

The story here is how Prior/Prozorov family goes through that life and how they pay the price for the choices they make and the circumstances they couldn't avoid. If you're up for a glimpse into their journey, you will enjoy this story.

At the same time I would point out that I sympathize with the negative reviews. If you see any glimmer of similar tastes that click with you in the negative reviews (in particular discussions of the screenwriter/playwright's use of dialog and the character of the characters), stay away. This story is not for everybody.

Finally I'd say that the DVD is way overpriced for a production of this type that includes little in the way of extras. Rent don't buy.

I was fortunate to see this film twice - once when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and again in Los Angeles, and all I can say is this is by far the best film of the year.
The all-star (and I do mean all-star) cast is in top form as they verbally joust with words from the equally-as-superior screenplay. I was intellectually stimulated in the theater for the first time in years -- and that is enough to qualify this film in the "best of the year" category for me.

This is one of the best films I had seen all year! It acting was excellent! I especially LOVED Maria Bello's performance. This is a must see movie. Hats off to everyone involved in making this film.

The Sisters is a movie that will no doubt polarize audiences. The critics hated it when it came out in theatres earlier this year with most of them labeling the film as a madly overwritten, pompous, dour, and overwrought psychodrama with about as much subtly as a sledgehammer. Yes - it's all those things, but the fact that it's so over-the-top is the reason why the film works. And it also features some great acting - particularly by Maria Bello.

Loosely adapted from the Chekhov play, The Three Sisters, The Sisters is all about sibling rivalry, intellectual snobbery and betrayal in love. Under Arthur Allan Seidelman's accomplished direction, The Sisters has a heightened artificially, with the actors performing as though they are actually on the stage. This can be a bit jarring and grating at first, but once you get used to it, it becomes quite effective because it reminds us of the stuffy intellectual insularity of this family and their world.

Even before the youngest Prior sister Irine (Erika Christensen) arrives for her annual "surprise" birthday party at a Manhattan faculty club, the characters are managing to spew hatred and vitriol at each other. Marcia (Bello) is deeply unhappy in her marriage with Dr. Harry Glass (Stephen Culp) whom she met while attending a psychiatric conference and she's spent most of her adult life carrying deep-seated emotional baggage.

Molested by her father, when she was a little girl, Maria resents that fact that her older sister Olga (Mary Stuart Masterson) who never bothered to take the molestation seriously. She's also angry that her darling kid brother David (Alessandro Nivola) who has gone and married the flashy and trashy - but also shrewd and oddly dignified - Nancy (Elizabeth Banks), a former sales girl with a Brooklyn accent.

Much of the first half of the movie involves Marcia venting her anger, picking at the poor insecure Nancy for not being educated and sophisticated enough for David or for her family. Into this psychosexual morass wanders Vincent (Tony Goldwyn) as their father's former assistant who takes an instant liking to Marcia. He's not put off by her emotional cruelty; in fact, it's one of the many things he seems to admire about her.

Also attending the faculty club is Sokol (Eric McCormack), a compulsive cynic, whose dry wit gets on everyone's nerves and David (Chris O'Donnell), an earnest young man, both vying for Irene's attention. There's also a jolly old professor (Rip Torn), who acts as a type of cipher and witness to all this rabid dysfunction.

From the outset it is obvious these sisters are all highly educated and accomplished, representing all there is to aspire to in terms of learning and academia, but inside they're roiling with unreleased emotion: Approaching middle age, Olga hides her sexual orientation, remaining deeply closeted and lonely. Irene has become addicted to crystal meth and ends up in the hospital, and Marcia...well, she's just an angry and neurotic basket case who seems to have wasted much of her life on being emotionally cruel to everyone around her.

The acting is strong, with Bello the centerpiece of all this swirling resentment and desire that persistently engulfs the family. The actress really manages to bring out Marcia's sadism, vulnerability, self-disgust, and the playfulness, and a frustrating sexual longing. The script is sophisticated, with the vitriolic barbs flying every which way - it's all about the verbal sparring of the intellectual set. The production design is quite beautiful and it emphasizes the stuffy claustrophobia of these characters inner lives.

The Sisters -and also most of the other characters in the film - are unable to intuit and break though the emotional constraints around them. The only way they no how to do this is with trading insults, rudeness and ugly behavior.

More than any of them, Marcia is often stymied by her past and by her family's urge to overanalyze feelings right out of existence. She's just so damaged by life's hard knocks that she just can't cope with any expression of sensitivity or kindness. In the end she achieves some sort of peace, but her eventual salvation comes at a terrible price. Mike Leonard June 06.

This is another surprising indy film that brings together a good cast, a good story and good direction. It's dialogue may be over the top for anyone who does not have a college education (it is set in the academic world and the cast talk like academics) but it is a fun film to watch and I was glad to have purchased it.

I watched this movie one day because it was streaming free from Netflix. I loved the film! Loved it so much that I went out and bought the Chekov play that it was said to be based off of. I read the play and the play was great as well! The original play is great but the adaptation is completely different from the play. I do enjoy the film and I actually would love a copy of the script because I think the film has stunning dialogue and great acting! I was shocked after watching it, and of course depressed due to the emotional baggage. BUT! I would recommend this film and I cannot believe I had never heard of it before (2005). Great film, great acting, the movie plays like a play! Great for actors to see and study! Enjoy!

Essentially, a two-stage play, modern-set Victorian, visually lavish, in which the convincing (if extroverted) inner turmoils of a family of three girls, and one disjointed brother, are evolved from early paternal abuse and expressed with an overstated zeal for the academia in which they live, resulting in a family that just does NOT know how to party.

When I think about it, there have been quite a few cinematic variations on Anton Chekhov's classic "The Three Sisters" from Woody Allen's austere "Interiors" to Diane Keaton's execrable "Hanging Up". Playwright-turned-screenwriter Richard Alfieri provides a more literal adaptation by updating the original play to the present and resetting it primarily in a Manhattan faculty lounge on the Upper West Side. Longtime TV director Arthur Allan Seidelman guides an impressive ensemble of actors in the proceedings, but the result unfortunately feels like a stagy TV-movie brimming with overripe theatrics. The abundance of characters and multi-layered set-up seem to make the actors chew the scenery excessively, though a few still make indelible impressions.

The structure and themes of the Chekhov play remain the same. The plot focuses on the four Prior siblings - Marcia, Olga, Irene and Andrew - and their clashing destinies and unraveling secrets furnish the drama as they get together for Irene's 22nd birthday party. Maria is the beautiful, vitriolic older sister unhappily married to a passive psychology professor while embarking on a torrid affair with Vincent, their father's former teaching assistant who has come unexpectedly for a visit. Irene is the buttoned-up middle sister, an English literature professor and by default the family conciliator. Irene is the protected baby sister whose sunny disposition masks deeper insecurities that lead to a crystal-meth overdose. Andrew is the weak, emasculated brother who has brought home Nancy, his slatternly fiancée, whom his sisters, especially Marcia, despise. There are others who encircle the family like a vise with their own histrionics - kindly department head Dr. Chebrin and dueling professors Gary Sokol and David Turzin, both in love with Irene and seething with rage against each other.

There are plenty of fireworks, but with so many characters to track, Seidelman produces a truncated flow to the story while making the movie itself feel overlong. The performances are all over the map, though each seems to have at least one bravura set piece. As she proves in David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence", Maria Bello is one of the strongest actresses onscreen today and makes Marcia a memorably fiery character, especially as she lays into the vulgar Nancy or succumbs to Vincent's ardent attention. As Irene, the underused Mary Stuart Masterson brings a coiled sense of repression that makes the contrast between her and Marcia biting and poignant. Less interesting is Erika Christensen, who makes Irene sweetly vulnerable but cannot transcend the trite arc of her character. Chris O'Donnell barely registers as the romantically obsessive David, but Eric McCormack - who will have a challenge overcoming his pervasive Will Truman persona - is all sarcastic blather as Gary until he manages to convey the character's pathetic jealousy.

Elizabeth Banks - memorable as the lusty bookstore clerk in "The 40-Year Old Virgin" - makes the vulgarity of Nancy palpable if rather obvious with a wavering Bronx accent, while Alessandro Nivola - equally memorable as the pampered rock star in "Laurel Canyon" - is effectively passive as Andrew. Tony Goldwyn seems oddly stilted as Vincent, making him a dispassionate match for Marcia's voracious self-destruction. At times, the dialogue is insightful with clever zingers. At other times, it sounds laughably mannered, and the general dysfunctional situation gets wearing over time. A few cathartic moments shine through, especially toward the end when Marcia and Olga come to terms with each other. The DVD is short on extras - just the original trailer and an overly earnest commentary from Seidelman and Alfieri.

THE SISTERS is adapted by Richard Alfieri from his play 'The Sisters' which in turn was adapted from Anton Chekov's 'The Three Sisters': the theatrical aspects of the play remain intact in this film version - and that is most definitely a plus! All of the action takes place on an obvious set (an enormously beautiful Faculty Lounge for a university where nearly everyone in the play is employed, and in a hospital waiting room) and the lines are richly imbued with dialogue that mirrors Chekov's form despite the fact that Chekov's play has been updated to the present time with all the changes (and similarities!) of modern day family life.

The story is well known: a family of three sisters and a baby brother are both united and bonded by the past and show the scars of maturing on their journeys from a childhood to adulthood with a father that was both a hero to some and an incestuous attacker to another. One by one each of the sisters and the brother peel away the trappings that hide each other's realities and make public the pain endured in their dysfunctional family. Maria Bello as Marcia carries the bulk of the story as the abused, spiteful, vitriolic, unhappy head of the family unit: she is astonishingly fine. Mary Stuart Masterson is Olga, the closeted lesbian chancellor who has never had the luxury of sharing her private feelings with her sisters for fear of the consequences of her sexuality. Erika Christensen is the youngest sister Irene whose painful life as being treated as a child leads to her life of drug abuse. Allesandro Nivola is Andrew, the baby brother left in charge of the family estate in the South and has married a trashy, mouthy floozy Nancy (Elizabeth Banks) who is the sole challenge to the family's unity. The stalwart Greek chorus is the old professor Dr. Chebrin (Rip Torn) who watches as the various characters tangential to this crumbling family vie for inclusion: Gary Sokol (Eric McCormack) whose asides keep the theatrical flavor moving; David Turzin (Chris O'Donnell) who loves and wants to possess Irene and is in bitter competition with Gary for her affections; psychologist husband of Marcia Dr. Harry Glass (Steven Culp); and the visitor from the past Vincent Antonelli (Tony Goldwyn) who changes Marcia's existence transiently. Each actor is superb, playing the marvelous dialogue for all its worth and giving us fully realized characterizations. Arthur Allan Seidelman is the fine director and the elegant musical score is by Thomas Morse.

There is action in this story and movement inside and outside the ways films should be shot when making a play into a movie. But for those who love the theater seeing this film little film will create a desire to have this exact company of actors set up shop in a nearby legitimate theater to allow for the grand impact of a fine play sifted through a fine adaptation to be absorbed repeatedly. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, June 06

Explaining a movie like "The Sisters" is kind of hard. Not because the movie so good, it's unexplainable...But because it's very good in a low-key kind of way, but doesn't really have a plot you can explain. It's based on a play and that's obvious. There's very few settings, it mostly takes place in a college faculty lounge; There's long dramatic speeches from some of the actors and it has the feeling of a debut film that was made as a college project...Although, it's not. For some reason, I liked this movie though. I liked it a lot. When it opens, it's in a faculty lounge. This is where we're introduced to several of the characters. Marcia (Maria Bello) and Olda Prior (Mary Stuart Masterson) who are setting up a surprise party for their baby sister Irene (Erika Christensen). There's two men (college professors) playing chess; One of them is the very professional David Turzin (Chris O'Donnell...Yes, he is still alive) and the other is the very sarcastic Gary Sokol (Eric McCormack, Will on "Will & Grace"). Another man in the room is Dr. Chebrin (Rip Torn) who frequently points out things in the newspaper.
Then a man named Vincent (Tony Goldwyn) shows up and says that he worked with the sisters' father when they were young; although he appears to be close to the same age. Then, the sisters' brother Andrew (Allesandro Nivola) shows up with his fiancee' Nancy (Elizabeth Banks), who nobody likes. Then the perfect little sister Irene shows up; Nancy and Marcia argue and throw insults at each other. Later, Irene overdoses on crystal meth and is found by David, who was following her. They later get engaged, but Gary Sokol is in love with her. There's also a couple secrets we learn from Marcia, when they discover their little sisters secret. It's all long and seems complicated, but it's far from it. It's like they filmed a play basically. But the film does work, in some weird way. It does exert some form of entertainment. Turns out McCormack is the highlight of the movie, his character Gary Sokol's sarcasm is hilarious. But the fact is, this is a slow-paced movie that leads to nowhere. It's not for everybody, but I liked it.

GRADE: A-