Evening

A lot of times, throwing a bunch of A-list actors and actresses together results in an overshadowing of everything, including plot. All the actors trying to out-act each other and shine, when it all just ends up having potential and failing immensely. With Evening, this is not the case. I love the opening shots of the film, and from the beginning, the atmosphere is simplistic and beautiful enough to visually and emotionally capture my attention. The story begins slowly and builds into a very elegant love/tragedy that is only bettered by the actors and actresses.

Like I said, the actors and actresses in this film are pretty well known, but not all of them are generally considered "A-list". They all pull off their parts to the fullest, of course Meryl Streep and Claire Danes do, and everyone brings to the movie something on a level of calm, refined art. It's a very nicely put together movie with a solid storyline and overly appeasing acting chops. I would recommend it to anyone who looks for movies that are hidden gems.

At least three writers (Washington Post, TimeOut New York, The New Yorker) have said this new movie would have worked better if made into a full-on melodrama by Douglas Sirk. This intermittent account of the death by cancer of an elderly lady named Ann Grant (Vanessa Redgrave), enlivened by lengthy and elaborate flashbacks to her medication-enriched memories of the early Fifties Newport wedding day of her upper class college friend Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer; and Mamie's mother, Meryl Streep) is glamorized to the point of extinction by its cinematographer-director Lajos Koltai. (That Koltai should have gone from the spare, powerful Holocaust drama 'Fateless' to this confection is pretty tragic.) You'll never see such nice new England summer beach houses, so many scenes full of well-dressed people, or so many shiny late Forties convertibles with the tops down. But the scenes, which ought to have you weeping uncontrollably, just make you look at your watch and wonder where the payoff is, in the Fifties or in that house where Ann Grant is dying while her two squabbling and unlikely daughters, the proper Connie (Natasha Richardson) and the confused but honest Nina (Toni Colette), hang around downstairs.

The cast is so heavy-laden with divas (besides those mentioned, there are Clare Danes as the young Ann—an imperfect match; Glenn Close as Lila's stylish, patrician mamá; and Eileen Atkins as the night nurse) it renders the movie's conventional scenes unimportant and sinks its gossamer profundities. "At the end, so much of it turns out not to matter," Streep tells Colette, and us; "There is no such thing as a mistake." And then: "We are mysterious creatures, aren't we?" Is it enough reward for ten dollars, overpriced popcorn, and a wait of two hours to come up with nothing but that? True, though: much of the movie turns out not to matter—though there may well be such a thing as a mistake—and it's called 'Evening.' At the end it all adds up to the psychobabble truism that everybody did the best they could at the time. Which maybe wasn't very good; but the details are missing.

Ann comes in and out of consciousness muttering the name of Harris (Patrick Wilson), whom "everybody loved" but Nina and Connie have never heard of. And so the point of the story is . . .what became of Harris? No, not really. Nor is it what becomes of Nina and Connie, because they remain unformed or undefined; not Ann, because we learn little of what she did with her life, except that she had two girls and a couple of husbands she didn't love as much as Harris and gave up her career as a cabaret singer. Not what happened to Lila, who wanted to marry Harris but got hitched to somebody else (mainly no doubt because Harris was the housekeeper's son—though in the swirl of the glamour and the blur of the alternating time schemes these social distinction aren't well delineated). Lila just comes back at the end to cuddle with Ann in a Chanel-esquire suit and utter those little profundities. There are some embarrassing tricks with fake fireflies and moths that Vanessa has to take part in and Eileen Atkins has to dress up like a fairy godmother. As Rex Reed says, "it's amazing how good everyone looks in white linen." But still.

Of course, for acting fans there is bound to be material to enjoy here. Though they overwhelm the movie, it's fun just to see these people on the screen. Vanessa Redgrave is great, getting the most from her lines without seeming hammy. When Meryl Streep climbs into her deathbed with her, it's some kind of ultimate Hollywood Kodak moment. Toni Colette, who can be irritating and even ghoulish, is appealing as the neurotic but ever hopeful Nina. Cunningham's very post-Sirk beautiful loser character Buddy, the doomed, passionate, and blooming drunkard, a character central to the flashback action though barely mentioned in Susan Minot's book, gives the sexy and riveting Hugh Dancy (somebody we're surely going to see a lot more of) a chance to chew up the rug—which suggests Cunningham would really have some fun and give us something worth watching if he let go and just winged it without his own or anybody else's novel to have to slice and dice. People think Michael Cunningham is so good for movies (though some of us have yet to be convinced). Well then, why doesn't he do one, instead of redoing other things for other people to direct?. He adapted his own novel 'A Home at the End of the World;' David Hare adapted his 'The Hours;' this time he has adapted Susan Minot's novel. (Rumor has it she's not that happy with the result. Why should she be?) Isn't it time for Cunningham to write an original screenplay? Then we can see what he can do, and it better be good. And it better not be like this. Despite Todd Haynes' effort in 'Far from Heaven,' this is not an age in which the Sirkian sensibility makes sense. 'Evening' is a celebration of regret. In the era of George W. Bush that no longer seems like a viable emotion.

Saw this Saturday night at the Provincetown Film Festival, and it's a stick-to-your-bones movie -- it's really stayed with me. Adapted very smartly from what is probably an excellent novel, it's a back-and-forth-in-time drama with fully rounded characters, thoughtful rumination on life choices, and, I'm not exaggerating. one of the greatest casts ever assembled in 100+ years of movie-making. Wonderful work from everyone, led by a luminous Vanessa Redgrave as a dying, deluded Newport matron, and Claire Danes as her much younger self. Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer is, like Mama, the real deal; Patrick Wilson looks like Paul Newman circa 1958 and doesn't overplay the charm; and what a pleasure to see such excellent stage actors as Barry Bostwick and Eileen Atkins contributing sharp, detailed cameos. Hugh Dancy, also from the stage, doesn't bring much edge to the somewhat clichéd role of an unhappy rich wastrel, and the family issues are resolved perhaps more neatly than real life would allow. But it's a deliberately paced, visually gorgeous meditation on real life issues, and you can cry at it and not feel like you're being recklessly manipulated. Also, what a sumptuous parade of 1940s/50s automobiles.

Halfway through Lajos Koltai's "Evening," a woman on her deathbed asks a figure appearing in her hallucination: "Can you tell me where my life went?" The line could be embarrassingly theatrical, but the woman speaking it is Vanessa Redgrave, delivering it with utter simplicity, and the question tears your heart out.

Time and again, the film based on Susan Minot's novel skirts sentimentality and ordinariness, it holds attention, offers admirable performances, and engenders emotional involvement as few recent movies have. With only six months of the year gone, there are now two memorable, meaningful, worthwhile films in theaters, the other, of course, being Sara Polley's "Away from Her." Hollywood might have turned "Evening" into a slick celebrity vehicle with its two pairs of real-life mothers and daughters - Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, and Meryl Streep and Mamie Gummer. Richardson is Redgrave's daughter in the film (with a sister played by Tony Collette), and Gummer plays Streep's younger self, while Redgrave's youthful incarnation is Claire Danes.

Add Glenn Close, Eileen Atkins, Hugh Dancy, Patrick Wilson, and a large cast - yes, it could have turned into a multiple star platform. Instead, Koltai - the brilliant Hungarian cinematographer of "Mephisto," and director of "Fateless" - created a subtle ensemble work with a "Continental feel," the story taking place in a high-society Newport environment, in the days leading up to a wedding that is fraught with trouble.

Missed connections, wrong choices, and dutiful compliance with social and family pressures present quite a soap opera, but the quality of the writing, Koltai's direction, and selfless acting raise "Evening" way above that level, into the the rarified air of English, French (and a few American) family sagas from a century before its contemporary setting.

Complex relationships between mothers and daughters, between friends and lovers, with the addition of a difficult triangle all come across clearly, understandably, captivatingly. Individual tunes are woven into a symphony.

And yet, with the all the foregoing emphasis on ensemble and selfless performances, the stars of "Evening" still shine through, Redgrave, Richardson, Gummer (an exciting new discovery, looking vaguely like her mother, but a very different actress), Danes carrying most of the load - until Streep shows up in the final moments and, of course, steals the show. Dancy and Wilson are well worth the price of admission too.

As with "Away from Her," "Evening" stays with you at length, inviting a re-thinking its story and characters, and re-experiencing the emotions it raises. At two hours, the film runs a bit long, but the way it stays with you thereafter is welcome among the many movies that go cold long before your popcorn.

Since starting to read the book this movie is based on, I'm having mixed feelings about the filmed result. I learned some time ago to see the movie adaptation of a book before I read the book, because I found that if I read the book first I was inevitably disappointed in the film. This would undoubtedly have been true here, whereas in the case of Atonement, which is probably the best filmed adaptation of a book I've ever seen, it would probably not have mattered.

I'm trying to figure out what the cause is, and I suspect that I have to point my finger squarely at Michael Cunningham. Much as I respect him for The Hours (which I have not read but which I saw and was awed by) I cannot escape the feeling that he not so much adapted Susan Minton's book as he did take a few of the characters and the basic premise and write his own movie out of it.

It's not that I dislike the movie. I actually love the movie, which is why, since I started reading the novel, I'm feeling disturbed about the whole thing. I feel disloyal to Ms. Minton for enjoying the movie which was so thooughly a departure from her work. Reading it, I can understand why she had such a struggle adapting it. Unlike what one reviewer of the movie said, it's not so much that some novels don't deserve to be a movie; it's more like some books just can't make the transition. Ms. Minton's novel operates on a level so personal and intimate to her central character, so internally, that it seems impossible to me to place it in a physical realm. Even though a lot of the book is memory of real events, it is memory, and so fragmented and ethereal as to be, I feel, not filmable. I think that Ms. Minton's work is a real work of literature, but cannot make the transition to film, which in no way detracts from its value.

I cannot yet report that Evening, the film, does not represent Evening, the novel, in any more than the most superficial way, since I'm only halfway through, but the original would have to make a tremendous leap to resemble the film that follows at this point. I guess I'm writing this because I feel that if you're going to adapt a novel, adapt it, but don't make it something else that it's not. I'm not sure if Michael Cunningham has done anything wholly original, but from what I can see so far the things he has done are all based on someone else's work. We would not have The Hours if Virginia Woolf had not written Mrs. Dalloway, and we would not have Evening, in its distressed form, if Susan Minton had not had so much trouble doing what probably should not have been attempted in the first place. But it's too much to say that it would be better if Ms. Minton had left well enough alone, because Evening, the film, is a satisfactory and beautiful work of its own.

Thus my confusion, mixed feelings, sense of disloyalty, and ultimate conclusion that, in this case, the novel cannot be the film and vice versa, and my eventual gratitude to both writers for doing what they did, so that we have both works as they are.