The pitfalls of transposing the delicate atmosphere of Anton Chekhov's plays from stage to screen are overcome with exceptional success by Mikhailkov-Konchalovsky, and with perhaps Chekhov's most difficult work, "Uncle Vanya," a "comedy" which moves to the cadences of tragedy. The director provides the social background to the play and period - when the country gentry lived in pastoral comfort during summer days, and the poor suffered in the numbing grip of Czarist indifference - with an opening montage of period photographs which document the pestilential poverty endured by the peasantry. If the film begins with these brutal flashes of history, it ends with a soaring camera movement which places both Chekhov's drama of the idle rich and the country's starving masses outside the frame in a humbling perspective which can only be called religious. In between, the camera is a calm omniscient visitor to the country dacha where the interior "action" of the play takes place. The troupe of actors is splendid; Uncle Vanya is without doubt the finest film of Chekhov to date.