During the 1820s, artist Eugene Ongen inherited a large estate in the countryside. In that region, Eugene meets his neighbor Linsky and Tatiana, a passionate girl who tries to fulfill her ambition over time. Things began to turn into a different path, as Eugene soon fell in the path of love and the girl announced her love for him.
With a character as enigmatic and detached as Onegin, you want at least an opinion or a point of view on his actions from the filmmakers, something other than splendor served up frame-by-frame.
Those who might appreciate a solid personal story told with integrity by a director with a sufficient budget to dazzle us with a few scenes that might have come out of "Dr. Zhivago" could do worse than take in "Onegin."
Unable to capture either its wit, psychological acuity, or formal rigor, the movie essentially reduces the schematic, seesaw narrative to doomy clichés.
Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
January 01, 2000
The film's only real flaw -- alas, a substantial one -- is that its pace is too deliberate and gets more deliberate as it goes along.
