Available on DVD: “Anton Chekov’s The Duel”

Fiona Glascott and Andrew Scott in Anton Chekov's The Duel

Probably no one reading this, or next to no one, is looking forward to running out to the closest Movie Trading Company to buy or rent Anton Chekhov’s The Duel. It’s a nice, unobtrusive entry of a kind bound to slip into and out of circulation with little fanfare, an adaptation of a Chekhov novella with a cast of unknowns and a director that few people have heard of. And yet, if you see this movie, it will give you more pleasure and more to think about than any of the more popular entries currently out there.

Of course, a duel is fought in it. We know that going in. Equally obvious, from the movie’s first minutes, is who will fight the duel, though the specific path by which these two men come into conflict is the story of the film. That won’t be revealed here, except to note that the men are opposites bound to clash, who see life, the world and themselves in completely opposed ways.

At the center of the movie is an illicit sexual relationship. In a remote corner of Russia, Laevsky (Andrew Scott) lives with Nadia (Fiona Glascott), who is married to another man. But as the story begins, something is making him crazy — something is burning a hole in his pocket and in his mind. He has received a letter telling him Nadia’s husband is dead. That means he’s going to be expected to marry her, and he wants that about as much as Amy Winehouse wants to go to rehab: He says no, no, no.

Director Dover Koshashvili, screenwriter Mary Bing and not least of all Chekhov himself present Laevsky and Nadia’s interaction with a fascinating precision of observation. She is superficial, flighty and amoral. He is self-absorbed, self-hating and angry. They have a recipe between them for lifelong misery, and yet, buried underneath the accumulating rubble of their relationship, there seems to be something there, a shred of possibility that they might still be happy.

Meanwhile, as Laevsky heads steadily toward some kind of crackup, the young zoologist Von Koren (Tobias Menzies) is confident, sober and self-satisfied. He has purpose. He has money. He is socially at ease, and he’s quite appealing, both to his colleagues and to the viewer. He can express himself without going into neurotic fits, and he lives his life according to a philosophy partly derived from his observations of the natural order. Rightly, he considers himself a superior person. Not inaccurately, he considers Laevsky a pathetic, useless waste.

In fact, everyone in Anton Chekhov’s The Duel, whether he or she realizes it or not, is in a state of crisis. The genius of the story and the pleasure of the film is in observing the ways in which desperation reveals itself and resolves or doesn’t resolve. This is smart, inspired, no-fuss entertainment.