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Cue The Fugue feuding, which also drags in the Gelbarts’ daughter Alexandra (Imogen Poots) in a growing torrent of emotional retaliation and sexual upheaval. Thus the film, which is directed by Yaron Zilberman, gradually gains in tempo to approach attacco (which was how Beethoven wanted his quartet to be played), to reach a finale in every sense of the word.
Yes, it’s all rather contrived. The contrivance is both A Late Quartet’s weakness and its strength. Some critics have accused the movie of being melodramatic, but I personally have no problem believing that classical musicians bonk each other all the time while indulging in massive ego trips. (Indeed, I’d be astounded if they didn’t.) The problem is more that the movie’s psychological edge is almost too neatly counterpointed by the aesthetics of the film, stylised to a degree that the characters’ celluloid turmoil risks finding any real resonance with us.
Most of the action of A Late Quartet happens in rooms that rather too impeccably reflect the characters’ personality and inner conflicts. Daniel, the control freak, lives amid tasteful modernist decor, Peter’s home has sublime Japanese woodcuts, the Gelbarts inhabit a middlebrow apartment that embraces both culture and domesticity, their daughter’s flat screams shabby chic. From chamber to chamber, everything is note perfect. Nothing is out of place, even the things that are out of place. The signposting couldn’t be more obvious if Beethoven had written out the instructions himself, in bold capitals.
Such immaculate fine-tuning is almost stifling; one gets the uneasy feeling that one is being, well, played. When the characters’ lives start unravelling, the visuals of the film never quite tip over the edge — it is all messiness composed, disorderliness contained. So we get a rather strange denouement that is both passionate and pat.
Yet this finally works in A Late Quartet’s favour, if only just. The movie’s rather ponderous message — life is about working together to make beautiful art — is anchored by the powerful performances of its four main actors, each showing what being a maestro is about, taking it in turns to carry a scene, blending his or her talent to another’s when the moment calls for it.
For the film is about two branches of the arts — music and acting. It doesn’t matter that at certain junctures we are made only too aware that Seymour is in a performance, in every sense of the word, or that Keener really knows how to work in a group, or that Walken is crowning a stupendous career. That’s what the movie is about.
Like a Beethoven quartet, emotions only have any meaning when given a certain structure, set against a particular framework. Feelings can run high because patterns have been set. As the best classical music reminds us, composition and catharsis can be one.
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