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Comment by inopinatus | Hacker News Reader

"Bastard asked me to understudy Konstantin in The Seagull. I'm not going to understudy anybody. Especially that pimp! Anyway, I loathe those Russian plays. Always full of women staring out of windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow"

― Withnail & I (1987)

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Plays in general are probably the easiest form of writing to distill into stereotypes since they rely heavily on dialogue and that's bound to get repetitive when thousands of works are written. I can think of a dozen plays right now where there were similar moments of young adults arguing with relatives (usually not parents but aunts or grandmas) or someone monologuing about a death that happened offscreen but in a vague way. All of these moments can be deconstructed and I do find them repetitive if I read a few plays in a row... but I still feel like it's wholly a matter of preference. If you like those elements - sad women staring out of windows, for example - you'll like the plays.

The great thing about plays is that they can be interpreted and reinterpreted again and again by different directors, set designers, composers, and actors. It's possible to bring the play into our own time or to subvert its ostensible message or to add new layers and nuances. It's wonderful that the text of the play is only the skeleton which to hang the body of the performance.

How this movie isn’t considered one of the best of all time is beyond me.

It.. generally is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withnail_and_I#Reception

Most of those are British...cult classic is a decent epitaph but most people have not heard of it...

The early ones were predominantly, but did you keep reading?

* 2000 Total Film third greatest comedy film of all time

* 2004 Total Film 13th greatest British film of all time.

* 2014 readers of Empire 92nd greatest film

* 94% "fresh" rating from 34 critics, and an average rating of 8.48 out of 10 from critic website Rotten Tomatoes.

* 2009 Empire 118 in 500 Greatest Films of all Time list.

* 2009 American Pulitzer prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert four-star review, added the film to his "Great Movies" list

Unless their hobby is watching classics, regardless of anything else about the film, 'most people have not heard of' a lot of films in that region of 'greatest of all time' films.

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