Raced out of work today to catch an early show of Evening, the summer film for Moms who can't bear another loud shot-em-up. I had planned to build a review around the whole concept of Women's Pictures (the more sensible way to describe what is lately called Chick Flicks), but that's not really necessary: Evening is a gem all on its own.
So let me tell you about Vanessa Redgrave.
I had a chance to see Redgrave on Broadway when she did Long Day's Journey Into Night, in a performance that was simply shattering; I had long admired her work, but seeing her up close (I had an amazingly good seat) was just overwhelming. She inhabited the role in a way I think few actors could ever hope to achieve; it was like hearing things anew. I finally understood the power of O'Neill (and even forgave the incredibly long time it took).
My theory about actors - it's a critic's take - is that for the greatest performers, there's a moment when everything just clicks. A part, an experience, a life lesson... whatever it is (and it's not the same thing for any of them), at some point they simply lose that last vestige of uncertainty and fear and simply dive in. They don't come this way - watch early Meryl Streep again and see the mannered, fussy details. 
And I'm never sure Katharine Hepburn ever learned this - it all seems like the same cloth, she just better at wearing it. But other great stars, I can see it (I have a long case that Joan Crawford really got to be a good actress in the late thirties, and then proved it in three amazing outings at Warners; and I think Bette Davis got to this point as well).
Redgrave has spoken about her life in such a different way lately - talking about regrets, talking about focusing on family and regretting some extreme politics... it's clear something changed. And her acting , always strong, is better for it. On stage or onscreen she has just reached an amazing point where nothing seems to hold her back. And Evening reflects all of this, from its focus on family (one of her daughters onscreen is played by Natasha Richardson) to her amazing new fearlessness.
Redgrave plays Ann, an elderly woman on her deathbed (from what we call Hollywood Wasting Disease - often called "cancer", it involves lying in a well lit bed, breathing heavy, while everyone else looks sad), who is reliving an earlier period in her life, when she was Claire Danes. Young Ann travels to Newport to participate in the wedding of her college roommate, Lila, where some painful memory took place.
Eventually we see what that was, but that's not really the point; in its meandering, multiple storyline way, what's really on display here is the messy unpredictable aspects of women's lives, and an examination of how motherhood - planned and unexpected - may be much more influential than discussions of love or romance. Lila is worrying that she may be marrying the wrong man, that she is actually in love with Harris Alden (a picture perfect Patrick Wilson) a doctor who grew up as the son of the housekeeper at Lila's family summer home. Lila is egged on in this by her brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy), a messy drunk whose complicated hero worship and unrequited crushes cause all sorts of unintended complications.
All of this unfolds in Ann's head, and she hallucinates the appearance of various characters from the past, and mistakes her night nurse (Eileen Atkins!) for some combination of her mother and Peggy Lee, making her views on the past somewhat hard to discern as fantasy or reality, a perfect "unreliable narrator" setup. Redgrave's authority, though, tends to settle the difference - this may not be exactly how it happened in every detail, but still quite true.
Evening plays on such a large canvas. It is essentially two movies, one a fairly traditional fifties era flick that could have come from Doug Sirk, and the other a modern day drama with Richardson and Toni Collette as Ann's grown up daughters, themselves dealing with inner conflicts and a mom who wasn't always the best mom, but their mom, nonetheless. It's probably no surprise that only Michael Cunningham (The Hours) could make this all hang together in a coherent, well paced way (he helped Susan Minot adapt her novel, and both serve as Executive Producers, an impressive feat for writers).
Ultimately, Ann is visited by the grown up Lila (Meryl Streep, taking over from daughter Mamie Gummer in the flashbacks), a vision in Chanel (that's for you, Jennifer), armed with the grace and tact of her own mother (an amazing Glenn Close in the early parts), but with a softness that shows through when she reconnects with her lifelong friend. But all is not so much revealed (or resolved) as it is simply settled. Both women have regrets, but also, their kids and each other, and in that, they seem to find the understanding that eluded them in youth.
I'm probably not explaining it well - Evening is rich with ideas, and subtext, and it caight me off guard and moved me to tears in places I never expected to be (and it's not the obvious three hankie moments, either; th movie seems to deliberately underplay them). And I am leaving out a key plot point, because you should see it for yourself. Evening boasts so many amazing performances - you could boil it down to Redgrave, Danes and Collette, though that's unfair to Close, Dancy, Streep, and even Wilson, who lends a soulfulness to the role of beautiful love object that is in its quiet way a triumph - and they alone are worth the price of admission (Gummer, I think, is every bit able to become what her mother is, though she's not that yet; Richardson, I think, has a real challenge breaking out from her mother's powerful shadow). But it is a world of ideas, and a world of women's lives, that are the real secret of Evening, a lesson that our lives are not, really, measured by our heartbreaks; they are measured by our joys. And it is Vanessa Redgrave's joy, as her character and as a performer, that shines most luminously.
Comments