115 min.
In Russian with English subtitles.

Videocassette release of a 1977 motion picture.
Based on Anton Chekhov's Platonov.
Russian title: Neokonchennaia pesa dlia mekhanicheskogo pianino.
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov.
Screenplay: Alexander Adabashyan, Nikita Mikhalkov.
Camera: Pavel Lebeshev.
Music: Eduard Artiomyev.
Cast: Alexander Kalyagin, Yelena Solovei, Yevgenia Glushenko.

Summary
"Perhaps in its complex irony even closer to Chekhov than Chekhov was...Among the movie's pleasures are the ensemble acting of an excellent cast and the extraordinary enterprising approach taken by it's preeminent Soviet director...Platonov is led to question his life profoundly - and then arrive, in the most roundabout way at a moment of affirmation. The exquisite closing scene strikes a transcendently ironic note." (Janet Maslin, New York Times).

Assorted privileged characters gather at the estate of a general's widow for a weekend in the country. An amorous, disillusioned schoolteacher, Platonov, a diffident lover of the widow, arrives with his ninny of a wife, only to be stunned to encounter his great youthful passion, Sophia, who has recently married a wealthy boor. Though disappointed in one another's course in life, they flirt with resurrecting the past while intensely experiencing despair about their futures. As the pyramid of love trian~es builds to its absurd climax, the action becomes a farce whose follies are played out in earnest, with everyone ending up wiser for the experience, or at least so it pleases them to think.