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GoldLyrics.com - The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
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List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $66.99
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Starring: Derek Jacobi, Delia Silvan, Chris Haywood, Hans Sonneveld, Oliver Streeton
Directed By: Paul Cox
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780794202590
Format: Color
ISBN: 0794202594
Label: Fox Lorber
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Fox Lorber
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2002-12-03
Running Time: 90
Studio: Fox Lorber
Theatrical Release Date: 2002
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Editorial Reviews:
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To the degree that one artist can bring out the best in another, Nijinsky is an inspired masterpiece. Australian director Paul Cox has not fashioned a biography of Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (1880-1950), nor is this a comprehensive survey of Nijinsky's influential works. Instead, Cox ventures deeply into Nijinsky's thoughts and emotions as expressed in diaries begun in 1919, just as the once world-famous dancer began his descent into... insanity? The question is valid, for what we witness here--eloquently expressed through Derek Jacobi's sublime readings of Nijinsky's diaries--are the musings of an artist who lost touch with reality, only to rediscover a kind of glorious divinity in the intensity of his own feelings. Cox accompanies the diaries with his own interpretive dance of imagery, archival photos, and performed excerpts of Nijinsky's dances, all set beautifully to perfectly chosen classical music. As a filmed state of mind, this is a challenging work of art to be savored over and over again. --Jeff Shannon
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Get this movie!
Comment: Different, moving, a unique achievement. The other reviewers detail the content - suffice it to say that, for me, the result is superb. I've watched it several times over the past couple of years and intend to continue viewing it periodically.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Journey into the Interior of a Soul
Comment: This is not a dance film. This is not a biography of Nijinsky. Instead it is the examination of a great mind. Derek Jacobi becomes the "voice", reciting intimate diary entries of this enigmatic dancer - poet - madman. Visuals include vintage photographs, natural landscapes, close-ups, and dance recreations. Unfortunately, we can never know exactly how Nijinsky danced but with this film we can experience how Nijinsky "thought." He sees himself as one with God, one with Beauty, and he trembles at a world gone awry. This film is unique - a genre unto itself - and for this reason I give it five stars.
Viewers interested in the BALLET RUSSE might consider buying teh following VHS or DVD: "Ballet Russe," "Nijinsky," "Tribute to Nijinsky" and "Return of the Firebird". All are worthwhie movies but none are as haunting or memorable as this strange film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing and visually stunning
Comment: This film is a visualized version of the diary Nijinsky wrote while living in a sanitarium in Switzerland. Derek Jacobi reads from an English translation of the diary. The film, like the diary, assumes you know who Nijinsky was, the roles he created and performed for the Ballets Russes, and about his complex relationships with his mentor Serge Diaghilev and his wife Romola. Taken as a whole, this film could be seen as a contemplation on the fine line between creativity and madness. The filmmakers have done a good job of selecting which passages to use. They neither avoided nor gravitated toward the most shocking ones (the sexual nature of the dancer's relationship with Diaghliev is clear, as are his tendency toward "self abuse" and the frequenting of prostitutes). Also apparent are his grandiosity (he virtually claims equality with God) and his pathetic need to be loved by an audience. The film is populated by dancers portraying the characters that were created on Nijinsky--such as, the spirit of the Rose, Petrouchka, the blue god, and the Faun. In the context of the readings from the diary, these characters seem more than ever to be fractured parts of the great dancer's inner essence. As arty and "high concept" as this sounds, this really is a beautiful and interesting film. Don't, however, expect it to answer any questions you have about the life of Nijinsky. It is, after all, Nijinsky's version of Nijinsky. One moment he seems to be a seer in the tradition of the poets Baudelaire or Rimbaud, the next, a self-deluded fool. Either way, he was clearly a creative genius whose flame burned brightly but all too briefly (his peak years as a dancer and choreographer were from 1906 to 1913; he died in a sanitarium in 1950). If you can enjoy films that don't fill in all the blanks, there's much in Paul Cox's NIJINSKY to appreciate.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Magnificent!
Comment: I really liked this movie and I thought it was very beautiful and the story was well done. I would definatly recomend this movie to anyone who has an open mind and likes foreign films.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An homage, not a literal documentary
Comment: NIJINSKI is a lovely miscegenation of the arts - literature (in that the spoken word is only the pages from Nijinski's diary), film, photography from Nijinski's time plus mood photography from the present, dance, pantomime, music, and tableaux. The result is a mood piece that allows us to pause and listen to the meanderings of a tortured soul who once was the darling of the ballet world but who succumbed to 'madness'. The diary entries are read with great sensitivity by Derek Jacobi. Probably only an artist of his caliber could make the rather repetitive and bland words come to life. We learn little about the dances Nijinski created, or about his journey with Diaghilev, or the other artits with whom his work is so closely associated (Stravinsky, Debussy, Berlioz, Picasso, etc): we do hear a lot about the Russian soil, about his being at one with God, about his wife and child. The visuals are elegant, especially the pas de trois nude ballet sequence filmed in the nude as a 'revision' or the ballet Jeux. The real problem with this film, for me, is the insensitive musical score. We see excerpts of 'The Spectre of the Rose' danced to irrational music, 'Afternoon of a Faun' mimed to unrelated music rather than Debussy, and most blatantly we see repeated use of his 'Petrouchka' ballet/character without a note of Stravinsky! Odd and disruptive. But the film as a whole is a beautiful experience and in insight to the dark side of a brilliant artist whose time before the public was far too short: the majority of his physical life was in an asylum. But his choreography lives on and this memoir revisits the remarkable influence of one of the important innovators of 20th century art.
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