After another week of hate, stupidity and division, I looked, as I often do, for the alternative: love, intelligence, harmony. Which led me to “A Late Quartet.” A musical group is all about shared affection, and team accomplishment, and, in the case of a particular Beethoven quartet, learning to adjust in mid-performance as instruments go out of tune. Two guarantees: You will be knocked out by the performances: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener, Mark Ivanir. And when some encourage you to harden your heart, you will feel the wish to..well, you know. My bet: If you watch the preview, you’ll stream the movie.
The title is a double entendre.
The music that anchors the film is Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14, opus 131. Half an hour long, played straight through, it is a bold, original composition that sets the bar extravagantly high for the musicians. Schubert’s comment: “After this, what is left for us to write?” Beethoven agreed; it was his favorite of his late quartets.
There’s another pun, and it’s much heavier. The Fugue String Quartet has played together for 25 years. Philip Seymour Hoffman, the second violinist, and Catherine Keener, who plays viola, are married. Mark Ivanir, the first violinist, seems like the group’s natural leader. In fact, it is Walken, the cellist, who founded the group. (”I’m the dad,” Walken told an interviewer.) Playing hundreds of concerts a year, incessantly traveling, tamping down ego for the sake of the group — few quartets can stay together for a quarter of a century.
So, yes, a quartet in late life.
As the film begins, Walken has just confirmed his darkest suspicion — the trembling in his hand is the first sign of Parkinson’s. Rather than hang on, he wants to retire. Will he be replaced? Or is his exit the sign that the Fugue has run its course, that it is dead? Thus: literally late.
His colleagues are so unhinged by Walken’s news that their lives — all their lives — are knocked off-center. Watch:
As you’ll see, Hoffman wants to share the first violin seat. Ivanir plunges into an ill-advised romance. And when Hoffman doesn’t come home one night, Keener wants to end more than the quartet.
Don’t think this is an artsy, pretentious movie. It’s about people fighting — clawing — for meaning in their lives. Like this:
I like emotional movies, and I’m an easy cry. But this film gutted me. Could you say that I’m getting old and sentimental? Yes, of course. Whatever I’ve achieved is so much less than what I want to accomplish. And I feel, all day, every day, as I never have before, the pressure of time.
You too? [To buy or rent the streaming video from Amazon and watch it now, click here. To buy the DVD from Amazon, click here.]
When I saw it, “A Late Quartet” hit me hard because of Walken. His performance is exquisitely dignified, admirably private. He’s not chatty, but he doesn’t have to be — his face says it all. And what a face! There’s no vanity here. He’s 30 years older than his colleagues, and he looks it. And yet the more ravaged and tortured Walken looks, the more beautiful I find him. His face is the face of an artist; you can imagine the statue. In every frame, you can see and you can love the depth of greatness — of the character and the actor.
And, of course, I see this also in Hoffman.
BONUS VIDEO
Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14, opus 131.
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This article originally appeared on The Head Butler
Photo credit: IMDb
