Constructed according to the two-in-one principle: by combining Chekhov’s story Difficult People and his humorous play Tatiana Repina, Muratova enforces a way of looking that is unusual even in modern art. Chekhov disregarded theatrical conventions. Muratova breaks with cinematic conventions that determine what you can show. In Chekhov’s Motifs, a family drama and a wedding between two strangers form a counterpoint in an unusual cinematographic time-frame. Muratova treats the phenomenon of the spectacle/show by filming a Russian Orthodox wedding ceremony in the present. She films the sacred ritual as a documentary, as a reality show, thereby desecrating the spectacle but not the sacred mystery. By connecting images, rhythms from different ages and leitmotifs of her own, Muratova makes time the protagonist of the film. The metaphysics of time erupt from the cracks of everyday life and manifest themselves in prose and poetry, in beauty and ugliness: charade and ritual at the same time. Muratova is at the mercy of her own independence. Maybe that’s why her art is said to be impracticable.
