There’s a moment before every concert, opera, ballet and recital begins when the orchestra or players have just finished tuning up. For a few seconds before the first notes are played there’s absolute silence, yet in that silence a hundred things are happening. The hopes of the audience, nerves of family and friends, final preparations for the players and that tension felt from living in a single moment just before something significant happens. Watching A Late Quartet is like living in that moment, yet nothing happens and when the film is over all you feel is disappointment at the wasted potential. Because really, there’s so much potential here. Peter (Christopher Walken) is a cellist who plays as part of a world renowned quartet with Juliette (Catherine Keener), Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Daniel (Mark Ivanir). When he discovers he has the early signs of Parkinson’s disease, the quartet is thrown into turmoil and faced with some hard decisions.
From the moment Peter’s diagnosis is given the film descends into a wooden, too complicated and badly written drama that leaves no room for the audience to care about the characters. Three of them are hugely unlikeable as it is, and Peter isn’t given enough screen time despite the film essentially revolving around him. There’s a struggling marriage between two members of the quartet which leaves them unable to work together, an affair with the daughter of those two and a battle of the egos, none of which are necessary or particularly interesting. Part of the problem is everything is so bloody obvious. Peter’s opening monologue sets up the film in a way that is horribly patronising and it doesn’t stop there. The script is painfully blatant, and even the daughter (Imogen Poots) isn’t subtle. She’s an incredibly irritating apparent adult who clearly has a lot of growing up to do. When she declares herself in love it’s almost laughable, yet an argument with her mother is one of the more interesting and most emotionally charged scenes in the film.
Half the lines seem to be there just to fill in the gaps in the audience’s knowledge, which would be fair enough if it wasn’t so offensive. Sure, there’ll be viewers who don’t know the music but that doesn’t mean you have to patronise them. If the film was more about the music than the people then maybe that’d be acceptable, but while it can’t decide what it’s about it doesn’t need to talk down to its audience. It’s possible that the majority of people watching the film are interested in music, and to them I say good luck. There’s nothing more infuriating than watching a group of actors who can’t play their instruments pretend, and with string instruments it’s particularly hard. At these points, the film becomes almost unwatchable.
And then there’s the ending. After an hour and twenty minutes of dancing between stories, it finally comes to a close in a way that would possibly have worked if a) we’d been given a chance to care about Peter and b) could hear the piece played in full. That second point is less feasible since it’s a forty minute piece, but the way the final scene is cut is just awful and leaves nothing but a bitter taste of what could’ve been a really brilliant film. In the end, the players are stuck permanently in that moment between tuning and beginning. They’ve neither progressed or regressed; they’ve simply existed and frankly the audience just doesn’t care.
The DVD/blu-ray features only the film and a trailer that would almost make you believe this is a good film.
Director: Yaron Zilberman
Stars: Catherine Keener, Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mark Ivanir, Imogen Poots
Runtime: 105 min
Country: USA
Film Rating: 
