Review: A Late Quartet (15)

Look at the cast. Philip Seymour Hoffman sits alongside Christopher Walken. There are fine roles for Catherine Keener, Wallace Shawn and Madhur Jaffrey.

And there is a juicy performance from Mark Ivanir as the musician whose ego creates cracks that threaten to shatter a long-held partnership.

Hoffman, Walken, Keener and Ivanir are the quartet of the title, four veteran string musicians with decades 
of personal and professional history whose lives have 
been ruled and shaped 
by their devotion to their 
craft.

They are persuaded to recreate their greatest performance and agree to do so. But petty jealousies, simmering hostilities and past romantic entanglements, allied to new infidelities and destructive yearnings, put the concert at risk.

This is an emotional maelstrom of a movie. An avalanche of emotion, in fact, set against the sturm und drang of claustrophobic closeness. And when the violins start falling out of the closet there is no end to the tumult.

In this marriage there are four lovers but the love has soured and the relationship has become safe.

Hoffman is perfect as the spurned husband and violinist who repays betrayal with betrayal, Keener as his wife the stronger partner in an increasingly fractious marriage.

Caught in the crossfire is daughter Imogen Poots who dallies with an older man, much to her parents’ outrage. But the film belongs to Walken as the ageing, 
fatherly cellist who 
discovers, quite suddenly, 
that illness has curtailed 
his career.

It is a majestic performance of quiet dignity that far outclasses any of the psychos he has played on screen.

This is beautiful and touching.

If it misses having a humorous streak then perhaps, given the subject matter, it can be forgiven.