{"id":4357,"date":"2012-11-20T17:14:55","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T01:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=4357"},"modified":"2012-11-21T05:31:46","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T13:31:46","slug":"a-late-quartet-film-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/a-late-quartet-film-review\/","title":{"rendered":"A Late Quartet — Film Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Late Quartet<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Directed by Yaron Zilberman<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is the story of a classical string quartet in crisis due to the illness and departure of its cellist and senior member, Peter Mitchell (Christopher Walken).\u00a0 It is a powerful, moving story, but I doubt that it will have a wide audience.\u00a0 The audience for this film is devotees of classical music, students in music conservatories, and fusty old conservatives with very conventional ideas about music, sex, and relationships.<\/p>\n

It is a film for mature audiences.\u00a0 When I say “mature audience” I don’t mean that it has sexual content and is therefore not suitable for young people.\u00a0 On the contrary, I think sexual content is especially appropriate for young people because they are most curious and preoccupied with sexual feelings and issues, and should therefore be taking every opportunity to learn about it in any way they can.\u00a0 “Mature audience,” for me, means an audience that has lived long enough to grasp the complexities and layers of personal relationships that have continued over a long period of time.\u00a0 “Mature” means having perspective, being able to see the context in which passions and longings are played out, understanding the limitations and trade-offs, and ambivalences that are inevitable in human relations.\u00a0 Being able to see that things change and evolve, and what is true today, may not be true tomorrow, and what was true yesterday may no longer be true today however much we might wish it to be.\u00a0 It means being able to face up to what we are as people defined by what we have done<\/em> or not done<\/em>, rather than by what we have wished or strived for.\u00a0 Young people can grasp these things intellectually, but they don’t know, and can’t know, what it feels like and looks like to a much older person.\u00a0 That is just the nature of being younger or older.\u00a0 That is the meaning of “maturity.”\u00a0\u00a0 So when I say that this film is for a mature audience, this is what I am talking about.\u00a0 The issues are mature and the themes are mature.\u00a0 I don’t mean to say that young people should not see it.\u00a0 They absolutely should, because it will help them understand older people.\u00a0 But the issues of the film are not their issues, with the exception of the sexual affairs between the younger girls and the older men, which the film treats very badly, trivializing them, and dismissing them in a rather callous, nonsensical fashion.<\/p>\n

I like the subject matter, and the film is very well made, but I have a number of problems with the script.\u00a0 The female characters are not well drawn, and I think, given short shrift.\u00a0 The most promising character in the whole film, Alexandra (Imogen Poots), is turned into a confused, spineless, simpering jellyfish.\u00a0 Juliette, (Catherine Keener) the violist and wife of the second violinist, Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and the mother of Alexandra, is not fleshed out at all.\u00a0 She becomes a very conventional and inadequate housewife and mother whose only asset seems to be her role as violist in the quartet.\u00a0 She fails as a wife and she fails as a mother, and is rather problematic throughout the saga.\u00a0 She seems to want to keep everything the way it has been, but she is not very effective in anything she attempts and we do not see who she is in any depth.<\/p>\n

Although sex plays a major role in the story line, the film upholds very conventional middle class attitudes toward sex and relationships, which have nothing to offer but disappointment, defeat, and failure, and you’re supposed to just live with that.\u00a0 Robert, the second violinist, whose dissatisfaction with his role in the quartet and his marriage is one of the dynamic forces in the film, ends up being defeated in all his attempts to shake things up and alter his position vis-a-vis the others in the group.\u00a0 He starts an affair with a young flamenco dancer (Liraz Charhi) that gets nipped in the bud by his wife after their first night together, and the very appealing girl is rudely dismissed.\u00a0 He should have fought harder for her, but he was a total wimp and caved in to his wife with hardly a protest.\u00a0 The incident did prompt them to hash out some of the issues in their marriage, which are of long standing, as such things usually are, but they don’t really get anywhere.\u00a0 Juliette takes the typical attitude of the American middle class woman and is prepared to trash the whole marriage because her husband fucked a young dancer one time.\u00a0 It’s so idiotic.\u00a0 I’ve seen people blow up twenty year marriages, sell houses, move long distances, fight bitterly over kids and money, all on account of a little bit of outside fucking.\u00a0 Americans are crazy.\u00a0 So while the film panders to conventional attitudes, it fails to offer anything constructive or insightful.\u00a0 It doesn’t raise any questions.\u00a0 It just proffers pat answers that it takes for granted.<\/p>\n

Similarly with the affair between Daniel (Mark Ivanir), the first violinist, and Alexandra, the daughter of Robert and Juliette.\u00a0 Daniel and Alexandra have probably known each other since she was born.\u00a0 The first question you have to ask yourself is why this affair even happened?\u00a0 As the film presents it — which I don’t quite believe — Robert recommends Alexandra to Daniel for violin lessons.\u00a0 Daniel treats her like a child and belittles her.\u00a0 He tells her she is not ready to tackle Beethoven’s Opus 131.\u00a0 I suspect that is something music students often hear from their teachers, that certain pieces are beyond their understanding and they should wait until they are older or more mature before they tackle them.\u00a0 What a lot of quatch!\u00a0 So what if you make mistakes?\u00a0 So what if you don’t understand it fully?\u00a0 Go ahead and plunge into it, if you feel a strong urge beckoning you!\u00a0 Defy them!\u00a0 I mean it!\u00a0 Of course you’ll play it better when you’re fifty.\u00a0 You better hope you will.\u00a0 But you have to start where you are, when you feel the desire and enthusiasm to tackle the challenging new project.\u00a0 If you wait for a bunch of old people to bless you and tell you you’re ready, you’ll never do anything.\u00a0 She should have ripped the music book in half and stormed out.\u00a0 Instead she seduces him.\u00a0 She is the aggressor and the initiator of the affair.\u00a0 She seemed to be seeking his approval, and she wasn’t getting it through her violin playing, so she had another way of getting it that she knew would work for sure.\u00a0 OK, so once you get him, what do you do with him?\u00a0 Here the film reaches its low point of nonsense.\u00a0 The affair is quickly discovered by the others in the group, in particular, by her parents, and they go into apoplexy.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Why is it so objectionable to them?\u00a0 The film treats their disapproval as something self evident and unproblematic.\u00a0 But the affair is quite natural and almost predictable.\u00a0 Robert, in the most dramatic moment of the film –, and very much out of character for a string quartet — punches Daniel in the face and knocks him off his chair during rehearsal — a punch that will probably be applauded by every second violinist around the world.\u00a0 But it is total nonsense.\u00a0 \u00a0Robert becomes a ridiculous figure, flailing about violently, out of control, completely helpless and totally ineffective.\u00a0\u00a0 Alexandra stands up very admirably to her mother, but then turns around and inexplicably dismisses Daniel and ends the affair that she just started, although Daniel is firm in his resolve to continue with it in the face of all the opposition — the only one in the film with any real character.\u00a0 But this makes Alexandra look like a weak, confused, immature idiot.\u00a0 This is why I think this film treats the women with pronounced hostility.\u00a0 All of the sexual affairs — which are initiated by the young women — are quickly and definitively crushed, but for no good reason.\u00a0 The film is simply hostile to sexual relationships that don’t fit into the mold of conventional middle class marriage.\u00a0 This gives the film an atmosphere of mundane conservatism.\u00a0 It is very ordinary.\u00a0 Nothing like Beethoven.<\/p>\n

I should probably say something about the Beethoven Quartet Opus 131 in C# minor that plays a thematic role in the film.\u00a0\u00a0 The choice of this particular quartet as a centerweight to this film is very appropriate because of the broad emotional range found throughout the quartet from anguish, contention, and turmoil, to relaxed, airy, lighthearted fun, as well as some enigmatic aspects that are difficult to penetrate.\u00a0 This quartet is rather unusual.\u00a0 It is in seven movements instead of the usual four, and Beethoven wanted them played without the usual pauses between the movements.\u00a0 So it makes for a rather long, continuous piece that is demanding for both performers and audience.\u00a0 Beethoven expected people to have long attention spans.\u00a0 He should have lived in America for a while.\u00a0 The piece is somber and anguished.\u00a0 The first movement is painful.\u00a0 It is a fugue that stabs at your heart.\u00a0 The second and fifth movements are much more upbeat, especially the fifth movement, which is essentially a scherzo.\u00a0\u00a0 It is somewhat repetitious, but vigorous and lively.\u00a0 The second movement is bright and almost lilting.\u00a0 The third and sixth movements are very short and seem to serve as introductions to the longer, more substantial movements that follow.\u00a0 The sixth movement is a somber, mournful dirge that segues into the vigorous final movement.\u00a0 The fourth movement is quite long, nearly fifteen minutes.\u00a0 I found it difficult to relate to.\u00a0 I couldn’t seem to get a fix on it, emotionally.\u00a0 There seems to be a longing that is not well defined.\u00a0 The anguish is there, but it is subdued, almost below the surface, threatening to break through in points but never quite taking over.\u00a0 Some of the good cheer fleetingly appears and then vanishes just as suddenly.\u00a0 I don’t get it, and I think it is the heart of the quartet.\u00a0 It seems to be the center of gravity of the whole piece.\u00a0 The last movement is rough, contentious, and full of struggle and drama.\u00a0 This quartet is a mature piece that challenges both the listener and the performer.\u00a0 It is very fitting to the issues besetting this group of people.<\/p>\n

The film has a lot to say about music and performance that will be of keen interest to musicians.\u00a0 I found it to be very touching and moving.\u00a0 It could have been a great movie if it had not taken such a conventional, mediocre attitude toward the story line.\u00a0 At the end of the film the cellist is replaced by a new member, who has worked with the group before, and is judged to be a good fit that will maintain the established character of the group.\u00a0 So everything stays the way it was.\u00a0 The quartet continues on playing the same music with the same character and style.\u00a0 The sexual affairs with the young girls are ended.\u00a0 The marriage seems to be limping along as it had before.\u00a0 Everything ends up pretty close to the way it was at the beginning.\u00a0 Only the cellist is replaced.\u00a0 And that is supposed to be a happy, harmonious ending.\u00a0 What a crock!\u00a0 It makes a mockery of the whole film.\u00a0 What was all the contention and struggle about if we end up with essentially the same quartet, playing in the same style, in the same personal relationships?\u00a0 Does the mere presence of a stable cellist subdue all the conflict and dissatisfaction that was afflicting this group from long before this movie started?\u00a0 This film should be titled “The Triumph of Conservatism and Conventionality in Classical Music and in Life.”<\/p>\n

This quartet should have broken up like the Beatles.\u00a0 I thought about that as I was watching it.\u00a0 The married couple should have separated or divorced.\u00a0 The daughter should have moved in with the first violinist.\u00a0 The second violinist should have left, founded his own quartet and been very successful, and the flamenco dancer should have gotten pregnant with the second violinist’s child.\u00a0 Now that would have been a good movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Late Quartet Directed by Yaron Zilberman     This is the story of a classical string quartet in crisis due to the illness and departure of its cellist and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[837],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-joe-cillo"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"