Quartet

[jackhammer91406]

I saw this film today and very much enjoyed it. The film is directed by Dustin Hoffman (yes that Dustin Hoffman) and he does a good job.

The performances are uniformly very good and perhaps helped by having a director who understands how to build a performance. It stars Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, and Michael Gambon as faded and once great opera stars and in Gambon's case an impresario who have each come to live at The Beecham home for retired musicians. Each one is building a new life surrounded by music, but really waiting for the last lorry to take their remains away. It is by turns a carefully crafted piece of melancholy and a delightfully funny "gramps is horny, warn the nurses" comedy. But at heart it is on one level an homage to artistic talents of any age, and on another a treatise on how our elderly cope with what was and what is; how they were then and how they are now. The entire cast does a very good job and I was very moved at the end. Hoffman used many famous opera divas and actors, dancers and musicians and has a very clever way of allowing us to meet their younger versions during the credits at the end.

 

I can't help thinking that one of the reasons I enjoyed the film is because of it's loving look at the "warts and all" reality of growing older. How one uses the time left really matters. This is a subject I have probably been a bit preoccupied with lately, so I might have taken more from the film than others will.

 

But still,overall I think it is a sweet and (again) loving look at how to have age and grace at the same time.

 

I may try it myself.

 

In very limited release.

[operalover21]

I saw this film today and very much enjoyed it. The film is directed by Dustin Hoffman (yes that Dustin Hoffman) and he does a good job.

The performances are uniformly very good and perhaps helped by having a director who understands how to build a performance. It stars Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, and Michael Gambon as faded and once great opera stars and in Gambon's case an impresario who have each come to live at The Beecham home for retired musicians. Each one is building a new life surrounded by music, but really waiting for the last lorry to take their remains away. It is by turns a carefully crafted piece of melancholy and a delightfully funny "gramps is horny, warn the nurses" comedy. But at heart it is on one level an homage to artistic talents of any age, and on another a treatise on how our elderly cope with what was and what is; how they were then and how they are now. The entire cast does a very good job and I was very moved at the end. Hoffman used many famous opera divas and actors, dancers and musicians and has a very clever way of allowing us to meet their younger versions during the credits at the end.

 

I can't help thinking that one of the reasons I enjoyed the film is because of it's loving look at the "warts and all" reality of growing older. How one uses the time left really matters. This is a subject I have probably been a bit preoccupied with lately, so I might have taken more from the film than others will.

 

But still,overall I think it is a sweet and (again) loving look at how to have age and grace at the same time.

 

I may try it myself.

 

In very limited release.[/color][/size][/font]

 

I agree. I enjoyed it thoroughly. What an amazing cast.