A Master Builder

Wallace Shawn plays the role of Halvald Solness in this adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play.

Shawn wrote the script. It was first staged by his friend and frequent collaborator Andre Gregory, and finally directed by Jonathan Demme for the screen. It is a portrait of peoples' misery and how a young visitor, Lisa Joyce, shakes things up. When it's a fascinating story, Demme seems uncertain of how to translate it for the screen. There are long close-ups of the performers, varied by moving the camera a bit. As a result, while it remains good, the visuals stop it from being a superior movie. Still worth a look.

A successful, ego-maniacal architect (Wallace Shawn) who has spent a lifetime bullying his wife, employees and mistresses wants to make peace as his life approaches its final act.

While this is a very good film, it must be stressed: this was originally a play, and it comes across very obviously as a play, even on film. The dialogue is dense, far more than your usual conversation. And the sets are minimal. Not sparse, but few... are there even six different rooms in the whole two hours? I feel like I have seen another version of this play done before (on film, not in person). But this probably is the defining version. Wallace Shawn is great, but really Lisa Joyce steals the show. In the few years this has been out, her career has moved along steadily, but she's not the big name she should be. Someone cast this woman in the right role!

Wallace Shawn is the titular aging architect who, although having a very successful career, is utterly dissatisfied. Early in his career, he usurped his mentor Andre Gregory and his career prospered while he has deliberately kept Gregory down. He has kept Gregory's son (Jeff Biehl) in his employ, refusing to let him go out on his own even though he knows he has talent because he fears being usurped in the same fashion. He employs Biehl's fiancé (Emily Cass McDonnell) and keeps her in a kind of sexual thrall to keep Biehl in line

Shawn has also prospered from his wife's (Julie Haggerty) misfortune. His career got a huge boost when her familial home burnt to the ground. This lead to severe depression on her part and the death of their infant sons due to neglect, but Shawn profited by parceling off the land and building new homes on the ruins.

Then Lisa Joyce arrives at Shawn's home. She is a casual acquaintance that they agree to put up overnight, but she reveals to Shawn that they have known each other for far longer. A decade earlier, when she was 12, he put up a building for her father and promised her he would return in 10 years to take her away. She has come to collect on the promise.

This is a very odd film. Obviously a third film project from Shawn and Gregory is of great interest, but this falls quite a bit short of the heights of "My Dinner with Andre" and "Vanya on 42nd Street". Like "Vanya", this is a play that the two have worked on for some time. Shawn provided a new translation of Ibsen's play and Gregory directed it for the stage. A filmed version of another of their adaptations of an intimate chamber play sounds promising.

Strangely though, they've taken a play that is very abstract and symbolic and given it a far more blandly realistic staging than "Vanya", which ends up making it a far more difficult play to process. While you can see setting "Uncle Vanya" in this film's rural house setting, this play screams for that film's bare stage setting. It's also odd for Shawn, who does not speak Norwegian, to provide a new translation for a play that already has a definitive English translation, and then to alter the beginning and end in a way taht renders the play even more obtuse.

Demme is also a very odd choice to direct this, and he seems sort of lost here. He just kind of steps back and points his camera at the actors.

Perhaps that is the best approach. The best thing this film has to offer is it's cast, who are really extraordinary dealing with a difficult play and odd staging by delivering really fine performances. Shawn could not be farther from Ibsen's conception of this character (Burt Lancaster in his waning years seems to be the ideal), but he does a really fine job ... he's magnetic in a part most folks will find utterly loathsome. Haggerty is magnificent and reinforces the fact that we do not see enough of her.

This is a powerful adaptation of a great Ibsen play. And by "adaptation," I mean there's an interesting little spin that, while faithful to the original, gives this version a bit of a twist. I'm sure Ibsen would approve. But I can say no more about that without getting into spoilers.

Like everything written by Ibsen, this movie is dialogue-heavy. It's not for lovers of fast-moving flashy special effects or loud background music. You can't really watch it while surfing your cell phone; almost every line of dialogue teaches you more about the character and pushes the plot forward. Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn are both in this film - veterans of another dialogue-heavy film, "My Dinner With Andre." Every single member of the cast is very strong. "A Master Builder" is the first Ibsen play that I ever saw, forty years ago, and it got me hooked on Ibsen for life. Check this one out and see if it hooks you, too.

It's neat to see Jonathan Demme's direction of this, which was five years after the last feature film he made (Rachel Getting Married). It's still very good, as are his recent documentaries like My Cousin Bobby. You can tell this is a play adapted for the big screen but Wallace Shawn is amazing and as far as plays go you can't do much better than Ibsen. It's a great play and the adaption is good.