A late quartet

USA 2012

Dir: Yaron Zilberman, Seth Grossman

96 mins

Cast: Catherine Keener, Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Rating: M - Sex scenes and coarse language

... A Late Quartet does one of the most interesting things any film can do. It shows how skilled professionals work. I knew about string quartets in general. Now I know more about them in practice, especially about how they require four talented individuals to form into one disciplined voice. I suspect any serious music lover will be convinced that Yaron Zilberman’s film knows what it is talking about.

One of the pleasures here is to see familiar and gifted actors forming an ensemble of their own. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener join with a newer face, Mark Ivanir, to play the members of the Fugue String Quartet, a world-famous ensemble based in Manhattan. Walken is Peter Mitchell, the cellist, who is the wisest and most thoughtful member of the group. Hoffman and Keener are Robert and Juliette Gelbart, the second violin and viola, who are married. The first violin and youngest member of the group is Daniel Lerner (Ivanir).

... How much does one need to know about classical music to appreciate this film? Not very much. Like all masterful films, it contains what is needed to appreciate it. All that is needed is an interest in human nature, which during the quartet’s period of crisis is abundantly revealed. Actors such as Keener, Walken, Hoffman and Ivanir are frequently seen in roles that don’t really test them. That’s the nature of the commercial cinema. What a pleasure to see them sounding their depths.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

... Writer and director Yaron Zilberman, along with co-writer Seth Grossman, has fashioned an emotionally riveting drama revolving around the difficulties that come with change. Can the rigorous discipline needed by the quartet survive? At their final performance together they choose to perform Bethoven's String Quartet No. 14, opus 131. The degree of difficulty in this composition lies in the composer's instructions that it be played "attacca," without a pause between its seven movements.

... The ensemble acting of Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mark Ivanir, Catherine Keener, and Imogen Poots is top-drawer. So is the exquisite music performed by the Brentano Quartet String Quartet. A Late Quartet makes the point of how great music can turn tragedies, disappointments, and personal breakdowns into occasions for spiritual transformation.

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality & Practice