A Late Quartet Review

• 5th Apr 2013

Despite an impressive cast and a challenging premise, this drama never quite comes together with an unlikeable set of flawed characters and an unsatisfying ending.

Christopher Walken is Peter Mitchell, an ageing member of a relatively youthful quartet, who is diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He organises a farewell concert with the group, but in the run up to his big night their ensemble starts falling apart.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener are Robert and Juliette, both musicians in the quartet and uncomfortably married to eachother. Their relationship is the first to deteriorate and its obvious that it’s the quartet and their affection for Peter that has kept them rooted together.

Imogen Poots plays their talented daughter, Alexandra with a pouty aggression that grates and leaves you full of sympathy for Juliette, her long-suffering mother. It’s difficult to understand why Juliette is on the receiving end of so much hostility when whatever faults she has are so minor. I think that’s one of the most profound problems is that neither husband or daughter convincingly get what they deserve, or realise that Juliette doesn’t deserve the treatment their metering out.

Mark Ivanir is the final part of the quartet and plays the part of the ageing mentor with creepy relish. He is almost an evil caricature of the older man, if it wasn’t that he was so easily manipulated by Alexandra.

The main problem for me is that I never really believed the characters were musicians and when the real musician came on screen, Nina Lee, this difference became even more marked. There was a lack of genuine passion for music from everyone except Christopher Walken. Walken elevates this to a standard it doesn’t deserve and his performance is so nuanced and delicate that by being almost passionless to everyone else’s hysteria and extreme behaviour, he becomes the most passionate of them all.

Maliha Basak