Quartet

It's our AGM on Thursday, so time for the final film of the season.

We try to choose something that will bring in the punters so that they will renew their subscriptions for next year, and this time we've chosen Quartet: something that will fit our age demographic perfectly :-)

I've not seen it and am looking forward to it very much.  Here are my notes:

Quartet

UK 2012                      90 minutes

Director:                      Dustin Hoffman

Starring:                        Billy Connolly, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Pauline Collins, Sheridan Smith, Tom Courtenay

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for one Golden Globe (Maggie Smith as Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy)
• A further three wins and one nomination

“There’s a gentle, sugared honesty in Quartet about old age: it stops short of anything too testing or tragic.  This is a lot closer to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) than it is to Amour (2012), and the only final curtain here is made of heavy, red velvet.”

Robbie Collins

At Beecham House, a home for retired musicians, the annual concert to celebrate Verdi's birthday is disrupted by the arrival of Jean (Maggie Smith), an eternal diva and the former wife of celebrated tenor Reggie (Tom Courtenay) one of the residents.

 

The screenplay is by Ronald Harwood, who adapted it from his play of the same name with the particular members of the film’s cast in mind.  In recent years Harwood has written the screenplays for films as diverse as The Pianist (2002), Oliver Twist (2005) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) as well as working on the screenplay for Australia (2008) but before this he had a distinguished career as a playwright and novelist.  Initially he had intended to become an actor, and a fascination for the stage and its performers is a recurring theme in his work: in addition to Quartet he wrote both the original play and the screenplay for The Dresser (1983) (one of the best plays and films ever written about the theatre) which starred Tom Courtenay as the general assistant to an elderly actor, After The Lions, a play about the French actress Sarah Bernhardt and All the World’s a Stage, a general history of theatre.

The director of the film is Dustin Hoffman, making his debut as a director at the age of 75.  Hoffman received much critical acclaim for his work on the film.  As the late Roger Ebert noted:

“What’s ... evident is that he loves the stage, loves show business and has a heart full of affection for these elderly survivors.  He also loves his location, here called Beecham House, and scenes are bridged with many shots of the elegantly landscaped grounds.”

After an award-winning career on stage and in film which has included, amongst many other nominations and awards, two Best Actor Oscars and three BAFTAs for Best Actor, in 2013 Hoffman won the Breakthrough Directing Award at the Hollywood Film Festival.

Here's the trailer: