A Late Quartet 2012
I don’t remember hearing about this movie, but it was one of the better reviewed movies available on sale at Dollar Tree in 2018. Despite a great cast featuring Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Catherine Keener, the movie is about a string quartet in New York City and maybe not surprisingly didn’t do well at the box office. While kind of a soap opera with everything going on with the characters, it is also a nice study of these four people who have been performing together for 25 years at a very high level and now there is change. The acting is very good from this cast as well as Mark Ivanir and Imogen Poots who round out the main cast. The four players are all very different but come together to make beautiful music, centering around Beethoven’s Op. 131, one of his compositions later in life called collectively the late quartets. But they have been doing this for a while and some are ready for change and others have change thrust upon them. Keener and Poots as mother and daughter have an argument I wasn’t crazy about, but for the most part the acting is very, very good. The movie works well as a portrait of people who are highly accomplished in one aspect of their lives but with big voids in other parts of their lives. This is a nice drama that I really enjoyed, though maybe it does’t break that much new ground. Plus the music is nice.
Written: 30 Sep 2019
Owned on: Blu-ray