A Late Quartet (***1/4)

At least according to this drama, a musical partnership is like a group marriage. Maintaining it for many years requires a harmony among the members as carefully attended to as a Beethoven score. A sour note from any can affect the whole. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener, and Mark Ivanir, a quartet as accomplished as their fictional counterparts, play the title characters, who are collectively called The Fugue. Their successful 25-year union is threatened first by the unavoidable, a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, but this destabilizing news indirectly allows a series of personal and professional differences to surface.

Only a few people have professional lives as important to them as their personal ones. These people have all, in some measure, placed the group before themselves. Two of them, played by Hoffman and Keener, have put the needs of the group before the daughter they share (Imogen Poots), and perhaps their own relationship. Hoffman’s character has literally played second fiddle for decades for the sake of group harmony, though he believes himself equally qualified to play either violin part. The other violinist (Ivanir) has avoided emotional entanglements in the pursuit of perfectionism. And even Walken’s character, one of the least eccentric, most sympathetic men, in his filmography, places the group above his own love of playing, wishing to bow out before his decline is noticeable.

The other theme in the movie more directly involves music. (Incidentally, while there are a few significant musical performances in the movie, including one by the singer Anne Sofie von Otter, there are not that many, perhaps due to the difficulty of syncing the actors’ movements to the soundtrack.) The first violinist wants to try playing a familiar piece without a score. The second violinist prizes perfection over spontaneity, heavily annotating his own sheet music. The movie appears to suggest that there is value in both approaches.

IMDb link

viewed 10/7/12 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 10/11/12

Thin Ice (***)

Like Double Indemnity, another film about an insurance man, or A Simple Plan, another film set in the snowy upper Midwest, this is about a scheme gone wrong, and about how men’s weaknesses can lead to their downfall. Greg Kinnear plays a Kenosha, WI, salesman who never misses an opportunity for a new client, even if the client is an elderly man (Alan Arkin) who doesn’t seem to have much income or property worth insuring. His weaknesses are gambling, professional jealousy, a blonde in a hotel lobby’s bar, and a certain lack of moral conscience. His adversaries are a mild-mannered violin broker (Bob Balaban) and a fairly unhinged (and darkly comic) security system installer (Billy Crudup).

I only noticed a couple of possible plot holes in the story, which comes from director/cowriter Jill Sprechter, last heard from in 2001’s Thirteen Conversations About One Thing. As events conspire against this antihero, I expected a certain kind of ending and got another, one that seems to make Kinnear’s character into an avuncular figure and that doesn’t really seem suitable, since he has previously displayed virtually no redeeming feature. It’s also rather clumsy in requiring the character to re-explain the entire preceding 90 minutes.

Though no doubt the final twist will delight some, and surprise most (but pay attention to the briefer voiceover at the beginning), I’d have just as soon left things more predictable. A surprise ending is, after all, a feat achieved remarkably easy so long one can make it contrived and wildly implausible.  That Sprechter’s film was re-edited without her involvement or consent after playing at festivals may explain why the conclusion seems both wrong and tacked on. Ignore it and you have a decent suspense drama. Replace it and you’d have a very good one.

IMDb link

viewed 2/29/12 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 2/29/12