Cinematic adaptations of Anton Chekhov have an advantage in that the former physician specialized in dialogue: His most famed works are, after all, stage plays. In his short stories, as well, the dialogue is naturalistic (if a little on the satirical side) and imbued with the life of the speaker, and not caricatured or stilted. Even a cursory exploration of his stories—in, say, a wisely collated selection—will show that among the Russian Masters, Chekhov understood the art of character best, and could resist stereotype with far more alacrity than his more vaunted countrymen. For instance, I’d read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story “White Nights” a while back and was stunned at how such a melodramatic and clichéd tale could attain to the status of a classic. As a young writer’s (to crib from Robert Louis Stevenson) “prelusory gymnastic” it has all the telltale signs—but immortal literature? No.

Chekhov, however, avoids such pitfalls. He never panders nor preaches, and is concise, without an ounce of narrative fat; his ear for dialogue, as stated previously, renders the late nineteenth century of Russia clearly communicable to today’s reader (this is in part thanks, of course, to his translators). Is it any wonder that much of what we understand as modern acting, with its focus on psychological realism and the working out of inner motivations, began with Konstantin Stanislavski, whose Moscow Art Theatre collaboration with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko revolutionized the medium primarily through Chekhov’s plays? […]