Long Day's Journey Into Night

This is a film of the 1986 Broadway production of the play. The unusual thing about this production is the use of overlapping dialog -- the actors intentionally step on each other's lines. This gives the effect that none of the characters is listening to any of the other characters. It is disorienting, but it is also true to life. Humans rarely communicate. They just talk at each other, not with each other. The results are the tragedy that we see in the play -- people reduced to ghosts lost in the fog and in the night.

This production is worth viewing for Bethel Leslie. I really dislike director Jonathan Miller's domestication of the Tyrones. I understand what he was after... and he did succeed; but for me this play shouldn't be brought down to earth. It's not a television "dramedy." When I saw this production live, I overheard one audience member at intermission jocularly tell her companion, "They're just like my family!" And at the play's climax (Mary Tyrone's descent down the staircase) when Jamie (Kevin Spacey) uttered his line, "The mad scene: enter Ophelia" the audience roared with laughter. To me, that's a little like urging an audience to laugh when Lear brings in the lifeless body of his youngest daughter Cordelia.

Jack Lemmon was a fine actor, but he always brought himself to the roles he played and in this case it was hard for me to forget that he was not Ens. Pulver, C.C. Baxter or Felix Unger. I did like Peter Gallagher as Edmund, but not Kevin Spacey's take on Jamie (oddly after being unimpressed with Spacey in this and THE ICEMAN COMETH, I *loved* his interpretation of Jim Tyrone in his revival of A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN... essentially an older version of the same role he plays here).

But then there's Bethel Leslie who makes this whole production worthwhile. I won't say she's the best Mary Tyrone I've ever seen, but only because saying so really makes no sense since many great actresses have played this role in many different ways. She is a less sympathetic Mary than usual -- that the character is an emotional vampire has never been more evident -- but it's a valid interpretation and a very disturbing one.

I know some fans of the play love this production, so I actually urge people to see it and decide for themselves. I think this is a well executed production of a flawed interpretation of the play.

No question, this is a great play, and the cast (led by Jack Lemmon, and also starring Peter Gallager and Kevin Spacey) are outstanding, but as a film goes, it's not very strong.

This version is merely a filmed version of the Broadway play. It takes place on the set of the play, and the direction doesn't hide it. As such, there aren't many interesting shots and some are just downright bad. And these people are play acting, not film acting. Very big mannerisms and movements. So it's not really intimate.

Still, you won't be bored. Great acting, wonderful play, just probably not the best film version of it.

'A Long Day's Journey into Night' (1987)

Opening thoughts: Eugene O'Neill's (one of America's finest playwrights, up there with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller) 'Long Day's Journey into Night' is a hugely powerful work and one of the greats of the 20th century. Being indeed masterful in character writing and character development and the emotion that pulsates throughout is intense and moving. The first act though may test the patience of first time viewers, with its deliberate pace and heavier emphasis on character and words than plot.

The two best known names are Jack Lemmon, a very amiable actor who was often typecast but did the type of role incredibly well but here as against type as one can get, and Kevin Spacey, hate him as a person but he is/was a heck of an actor. Along with my love of the play and wanting to see as many productions/adaptations as possible, they were my main reasons for seeing this version. While not one of the best, it is still very well crafted and powerful.

Bad things: Limitations do show in the photography and settings, which do an under-budgeted and disorganised feel.

The photography also looking a bit too static and filmed play-like.

Good things: It however is incredibly well acted. The best performances coming from a truly devastatingly moving Bethyl Leslie as the most richly drawn character of the play and from Spacey in a masterclass of searingly intense self-loathing. Peter Gallagher is also moving. Lemmon doesn't quite embody his patriarchal role in the same way as the others do, but he does an admirable job playing against type and is very commanding. The chemistry smolders between the four, Lemmon and Leslie and Lemmon and Spacey particularly so.

O'Neill's writing is hugely intelligent, thought-provoking and complex in the way the characters are written and interact. It is very heavy in talk, and it is very uncompromising talk, but it's the kind that is always crucial to every character, their actions, way of thinking and motivations.

Moreover, the production is deliberately paced, but actually never felt dull to me (even the early portions), in fact for me it flew by. It also has a big emotional impact, especially with Mary and how harrowingly she declines, both in a searingly intense and tear-inducingly moving way which makes it not an easy watch. The direction throughout is sympathetic and intelligent. The characters still are psychologically fascinating, as usual with O'Neill, they have been criticised for being unlikeable but to me they have always come over as very realistic (like the subject matter itself, so much so it hit home with me). While they have their flaws, then again most characters in most films do, they are so powerfully and intricately written that it was hard not to relate.

Closing thoughts: Concluding, not perfect with visual limitations and some static-ness but very impressive everywhere else.

8/10.

Having once played Edmund Tyrone myself in summer stock back in 1976, and coming from an Irish-American family, I tend to be a tough critic of productions of this play. For my money, however, this is the most nuanced, well-acted production of LDJIN available. Lemmon perfectly embodies the combination of grandiosity and pettiness that comprise James Tyrone, Sr. Peter Gallagher is a finely poetic Edmund, and Kevin Spacey's Jamie is the most scalding portrait of self-loathing I have ever seen.

The linchpin of the story, for being everybody's scapegoat, is of course Mary Tyrone, and Bethel Leslie's performance is the bedrock and great surprise of this production. Her Mary is less affected and more internal than that of the lacier Katharine Hepburn, who to me always seemed to have one eye on the camera. Having grown up with a real M.T. in my own extended family, I can state from experience that Miss Leslie's "fogbound" portrayal is vastly more authentic, and, to me at least, the more heartbreaking for it.

A superb production all around.