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A Late Quartet film a wonderful example of classical music reflecting universal themes

By John Terauds on December 1, 2012

Mark Ivanir, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Christopher Walken are members of the fictional Fugue Quartet

A Late Quartet, a film about the deep fissures that can open up among four longtime collaborators who happen to be classical musicians, is an engrossing hour-and-a-half of fine drama composed with the same care as the music in its soundtrack.

The film by Yaron Zilberman, which was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival nearly three months ago, opened yesterday at the Varsity Cinemas.

It’s a powerful psychological journey that examines several different aspects of human relationships — as colleagues, as life partners, as lovers and as parents and children — that just happens to revolve around the fate of a busy, established, world-famous string quartet (think Emerson or Juilliard as role models) and the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.

The music is window dressing, not the point of the story. But, from a personal point of view, it’s wonderful to see a film whose characters and their interrelationships are composed with the same laying out of themes and their development as one finds in the music itself.

It is also refreshing to see classical music not treated reverentially, but as an everyday fact of life for the people whose lives become part of hours for a few minutes.

The real dramatic juice here is the fodder of all great tales: mortality, ambition, lust, jealousy and even revenge, and the four principal actors — Mark Ivanir, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Christopher Walken — deploy their considerable skills with subtle force.

Each relationship between these four people — as well as a fifth, younger character portrayed by Imogen Poots in what I thought was a strangely flighty performance — is depicted on several levels, including miscellaneous subtexts and psychological manipulations. The ending is ambiguous. We are left by Zilberman — as by our real lives — in a state of uncertainty about what the future may hold.

It’s a great, grounding, deeply satisfying journey into something serious at this frivolous time of year.

Here are the current Varsity showtimes. The trailer:

John Terauds

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