Though
director Yaron Zilberman's first feature A Late
Quartet often looks like another episode of “As
the World Turns,” or perhaps more apropos, “The
Young and the Restless,” its nuanced
performances are always dignified and deeply
affecting and its look at the discipline it
takes to become a successful music group,
classical or otherwise, is revealing.
Co-authored by Zilberman and Seth Grossman, The
Fugue, a New York-based string quartet that has
played over 3,000 concerts throughout the world,
faces a crisis when its oldest member, cellist
Peter Mitchell (Christopher Walken), is
diagnosed with early stage Parkinson's disease
and is unsure how long he will be able to
continue playing.
After a few rehearsals that do not go well,
Peter, still grieving from the death of his
wife, Miriam, a mezzo-soprano, tells the rest of
the quartet the news that threatens the
stability of the ensemble that has been together
for twenty-five years. Change does not come
easily and here it is made even more poignant by
a montage of photographs that shows each player
when they were young. It was obvious when the
group was first formed by first violinist Daniel
Lerner that Peter, thirty years older that the
rest, would someday have to relinquish his
chair, but the reason for his leaving could not
have been anticipated.
After the group receives the news of Peter's
illness, signs of hidden resentment begin to
surface. The second violin, Robert Gelbart
(Philip Seymour Hoffman), asks to share the
first violin with the moody and withdrawn Daniel
(Mark Ivanir), but Robert's wife, violist
Juliette (Catherine Keener) tells her husband
she does not think his talent measures up. The
criticism hurts and a one-night stand with his
exotic jogging partner (Liraz Charhi), puts his
long relationship with Juliette in jeopardy.
Subsequent events, including a romance between
Daniel and Robert's daughter Alexandra (Imogen
Poots), threaten to tear apart what remains of
the quartet's emotional ties.
Christopher Walken stands out as the stricken
cellist and his performance shows a different
side to his character than has been evident in
the stereotypical roles he has been playing.
Suffering is written on his face yet his dignity
in the face of unwanted change is inspiring.
Hoffman delivers his usual powerful but
understated performance and, though his actions
seem immature, we can see the frustration that
has been building up over the years, literally
playing second fiddle to Daniel. The rest of the
cast is also stellar including the unheralded
Ivanir, and an impassioned scene between mother
and daughter (Keener and Poots) has a strong
impact.
While A Late Quartet is framed by rehearsals and
snippets of performances of Beethoven's String
Quartet No. 14, Opus 131, his most mystical and
complex work (performed by the Brentano String
Quartet), the film misses an opportunity to
educate the viewer about the composer or the
work. Peter tells his class to blame Beethoven,
not him, for having to play the piece's seven
movements without a break, intimating that
Beethoven had it in for aspiring musicians. What
might have been conveyed, however, is that the
seven movements are unbroken because they
display a unity of conception far beyond works
artificially divided into slow and fast
movements.
As described by Author J.W.N. Sullivan, the
Beethoven 14th Quartet is characteristic of “the
mystic vision to which everything appears
unified in the light of one fundamental
experience, a revelation of existence as seen
from the vantage point of a higher
consciousness.” Though A Late Quartet deals with
the mundane struggles of life, the realization
that everything must come to an end, and the
tenuous balance between the individual and the
whole, the ultimate willingness of the players
to subordinate personal concerns to a larger
vision is what Beethoven's life was about and,
though marred by melodrama, the film also
mirrors that vision, even if it fails to make
the connection.
