August (1996 film)
6.2 /10 1 Votes
Director Anthony Hopkins | 6/10 IMDb Duration Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Writer Anton Chekhov , Julian Mitchell Release date 9 August 1996 Tagline It's really how life can appear with desillusions, good and funny moments, peace, love and hate. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
August trailer 1996
August is a 1996 British drama film directed by and starring Anthony Hopkins as Ieuan (IPA:j/əɨ/a/n) Davies, and featuring Rhys Ifans in a small role in one of his earliest films, as Griffiths. It is an adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, with the character Ieuan Davies taking over the title role from the play.
Contents
The film was Hopkins's first feature film with a full cast (he had previously directed the one-man-performance of Dylan Thomas: Return Journey in 1990). It would be over a decade before his next directorial effort would, Slipstream in 2007, which he also wrote and for which he also composed the score.
August trailer 1996
Adaptation and issues
The film adapts Uncle Vanya to a turn-of-the-century Welsh setting, emphasizing the hardships of Welsh industrial life in the slate quarries and Welsh-English turmoil as an English professor upsets normal Welsh life when he arrives at the Welsh estate which acts as his vacation home (at one point Ieuan states that he feels that he has been cheated by the Prof. Blathwaite, just as "the English have always cheated the Welsh").
Language
It is primarily in English, with a few lines in Welsh here or there - such as diolch yn fawr iawn ("thank you very much"), cariad (a term of endearment, meaning "love"), and iechyd da ("cheers").
References
August (1996 film) WikipediaAugust (1996 film) IMDb August (1996 film) themoviedb.org