A Late Quartet
Directed by: Yaron Zilberman
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener, Mark Ivanir, Imogen Poots
Running Time: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: R
Release Date: November 2, 2012 (Chicago)
PLOT: A musical team (Hoffman, Walken, Keener, Ivanir) struggles to keep their focus while preparing their performance of Beethoven's Opus 131 string quartet in C# Minor.
WHO'S IT FOR? Classical music knowledge is not necessary to engage in the drama of this movie. Most of all, A Late Quartet requires patience, both for its glaring flaws and for its smaller concept.
OVERALL
Like the Jamaican bobsled team in Cool Runnings or a group of acrobats, a string quartet is a concise team that requires focus from all involved performers working at their full potential in order to achieve their complicated goal. Such a harmony can be challenged by natural elements, or in the case of this movie's professional group, the wavering shift of pride to ego, and the effect that such has on others. As the performers are quick to connect art to the lives of its creators, so does the collective craft of this quartet become about the emotional context for which such music is recreated on stage for outsiders to be involved in.
Without being taken as a movie strictly about fancy schmancy, hoity-toity, prissy pants classical music (which it isn't), A Late Quartet is a quaint character study about four team members as their group begins to fall apart. Though the film does struggle to get its audience to care about professional musicians who seem to live in their own bubble, the script eventually has us invested in the importance of the team, thanks to buoyant performances and efficient character development.
Returning Hoffman to average middle-aged characters after his work as the theatrical Lancaster Dodd in The Master, this is a performance from "The Hoff" that has best immediate comparison to something like his work in Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Similar to his character in that film, here Hoffman throws a grown man temper tantrum about something not being fair (as he wallowed in Devil, "IT'S NOT FAIR!"), and we are also presented with an abrupt image of him having sex with someone far more erotically photogenic than he is.
Snark aside, A Late Quartet does prove for Hoffman, as with its other actors, the power that he has in a more "average" role, and the commitment that he can show to his craft (he is certainly believable as a man who wears sweatpants but also can play the hell out of a violin). Similar to other actors as well, this is not a role that will stand high in his busy filmography, but does continue his consistency of commitment to any of his performances.
As a seasoned cellist who notes that the movie's center piece offers "No time to pause to take a breath," Walken is a bit special as a performer with his mortality on his conscience. He is stuck between pride and accepting the condition of his body, which begins a battle to slow down Parkinson's. Walken provides some sentimentality to the movie's first half, of which he is of much focus. Later, the script attempts to overdo its means for sympathy by pulling a moment out of last year's The Iron Lady, a silly and unnecessary jab at heartstrings.
With its male characters, A Late Quartet is able to create compelling subjects, each with their impeding flaw in pride (such as with Ivanir's calculated first chair violinist). However, the one woman in the quartet, played by Keener, is basically walked all over by her co-performers. Keener is given such bad scenes from the script itself that it's a question as to whether she is meant to serve as more than dramatic gravity, despite the fact that she shows here (and with everything else she seems to touch) that she does have dramatic control over herself. Instead, the script puts her in contrived situations, invalidating the chance to seriously feel for this character, such as when she seems to find cheesy serenity from randomly eavesdrop on a boy quoting Ogden Nash's "Old Men" out loud on the subway train. Even worse than that is an emotionally destructive scene between her and on-screen daughter Poots, a dramatic left turn more fitting for an already terrible Tyler Perry movie, and not something with elegant promise like A Late Quartet.
For a film so devoted to the act of performing difficult music, the cinematography of A Late Quartet is tricky enough to provide the illusion that the actors are playing all of their notes, preventing falseness from being a distraction to the movie's ultimate concept (apparently Keener did have a violin double, however). Given the emotional importance of the movie, A Late Quartet successfully uses medium shots on characters to focus on their faces, and not their fingerings as they play, with Ivanir appearing to be the best fake violinist, if he isn't already a true violinist himself.
Though A Late Quartet desires to be so formal, its drama is made of two disagreeable, if not plainly dumb moments in which heavy drama is suddenly unearthed by characters, achieving the results of goofy spectacle at best. With their brazen spontaneity, these explosive moments play off like bad theater, despite their importance as pivotal moments to the collapsing of the team's strength. The same can be said for the aforementioned cheesy scenes involving Keener and Walken, or the usage of a pre-filmed documentary to set up back-story for the quartet - amateurish elements in a chamber piece with its own hopes for professionalism.
Despite these shrill passages, A Late Quartet is best a collective character study about a team, this specific team being a unique center for which to focus a quaint drama on. Though the film is certainly passionate about classical music (one may think music is more of an inspiring factor than making a film), it speaks to things beyond classical music. And for such a film with such a title, it only has five scenes in which New Yorkers walk 'n talk around their city in pea coats.
FINAL SCORE: 6/10