Release Date: 5th April 2013 (UK)
A Late Quartet follows the members of a world-renowned string quartet struggling to stay together in the face of death, competing egos and in suppressible lust.
Now A Late Quartet obviously isn’t going to be winning any awards. Although it is a small picture full of great actors I honestly have to say I did expect a little more from it. Now I’m not going to say that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. It’s a very well made film, that is supported by a great score and some tremendous cinematography, unfortunately the thing that lets it down the most is its plot.
For example due to there being so many characters that the film focuses on, as a whole the movie ends up feeling kind of bloated. Originally the film begins with Christopher Walken citing his own problems, but as the movie progresses more occurrences seem to happen between the other characters, which as you can most probably expect eventually leads to other things. The film ends up almost abandoning Walken’s character as it decides to focus on other aspects, which admittedly are not as original or compelling. For example this other story-line feels like something you would expect to see in a soap-opera, it felt unnecessary and almost idiotic at times. Sure the performances are of a very fine standard, but the material was poor in comparison.
However it’s not all bad. As I said there are some wonderful long shots in this movie as the musicians perform and also the classical score is great, but when a film focuses on a quartet I think we’d probably expect that.
As I previously stated the film is full of great actors. On board we have Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener, but the real dark horse of the film is Mark Ivanir. I have to admit, although I’ve seen a few of the films that he has starred in, I don’t actually recall his character or his performance in those films, but it’s safe to say much to my own surprise he probably does the best job of everyone involved in this movie.
Occasionally it can become slightly overdramatic and at times relatively dull, but it’s safe to say although the script is somewhat lacking, the likeability of the actors on board make it all that much better. It is a well-made film, and it’s pretty obvious that it has high ambitions, its obviously been made for aesthetic reasons and not for mass appeal, but for me I just wasn’t as compelled as I wanted to be although I can admit, despite its problems I did think at times it showed signs of brilliance.
6.5/10
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