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Posted - 12/14/2012 : 15:10:49
If you don't fall in love with at least some of this movie there's something wrong with you.
Which is how I feel about some of the inane critiques I've read. Most of these are written by people who have no personal experience of what it's like to have been an idol, nor of the mixed joys and pains of ageing. And that's made them miss the point of this film. Comparisons with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel are, I guess, inevitable.
Yes, like that not-so-Exotic Hotel, Quartet also features a gathering of wrinklies facing their remaining years. Indeed both films partly depend on the presence of the magnificent Maggie Smith, who offers us in one a woman whose identity has been lived through others, and in the other, someone who's been lauded for her unique talent.
Unlike the Marigold, Beecham House is far grander in every way, including its residents.
It's a retirement home for professional musicians and beautifully cared for. Located in the leafy Home Counties of England, it's verdant and familiar rather than exotic. Since part of the plot involves preparation for the annual fund-raising concert, the home is clearly a charity.
British Actors Equity runs a residential home for retired performers; it, too, is a charity. Not nearly so grand as Beecham House, it accepts all those whose lives have been spent in show biz. So, it's bordering on the vicious, as one prominent critic did, to accuse the 75-year-old Dustin Hoffman of looking at ageing through rose-tinted glasses.
"The roses have gone," declares sprightly, delightfully dotty Pauline Collins, "but the chysanthemums are magnificent."
There are three social crimes in America, and sadly in more and more of Britain: to be poor, to be ill, to be old.
In an age which tends to marginalize and demean its elderly, Hoffman's film doesn't idealize age, it celebrates it. It reminds us we're all on a shared journey, and we're very sorry specimens indeed if we forget to respect each and every stage of it.
Beecham House's residents, are surrounded by magical memories of a time when they were adulated and adored around the world. They're portrayed by some equally adulated actors - clearly far from retirement! And, however wonderful they've been considered in the past, first-time director Dustin Hoffman gently coaxes from them some of the best performances of their glorious careers.
The story's been adapted from his own less-than-triumphant stageplay by Ronald Harwood. Critics seems to have moaned about the simple plot without quite understanding the story beneath. Some simplistically concluded it was a play about the aging process.
Well, maybe - but it's far more than that. Most tellingly, it's about the role of art in the development of the human heart. The point is unusually made by a former operatic tenor who periodically presents lectures on music to groups of visiting young students. Not music students. Just kids. We don't get the full lecture, but witness it as an interactive thing with comparisons between opera and hip-hop. OK, maybe Harwood exaggerates a bit, but it works.
It also reveals much about the tenor, here played by the amazing Tom Courtenay. Like his fellow members of the quartet - and those around them - Courtenay, guided by Harwood's script and Hoffman's direction, reveals such complexity within a deceptively simple presentation.
The quartet itself comprises Courtenay, Maggie Smith, Pauline Collins, and Billy Connolly.
Connolly's always been a better actor than he's shown in some rather undemanding films of late. And, of course, his international fame as a comic almost threatened to eclipse his thespian skills.
But I recall a 1976 BBC teleplay called The Elephant's Graveyard in which he shone in a virtual two-hander following two geezers tromping around the countryside wondering what life's all about. Connolly was quite simply brilliant.
Here he inhabits the large yet somehow elfin dreamer, fantacizing about sex with any younger woman he meets, which is, at least partly, his way of dealing with the stroke affecting his left side.
Anyone familiar with Pauline Collins' prodigous career [Upstairs, Downstairs, and Shirley Valentine among scores more] has delighted in her infallible ability to fuse comedy with an entirely human dimension grounded in truth. More often than not aware of her increasing Altzheimer's, she self-medicates with the optimism of Pollyanna delivered at great speed. She's utterly charming.
As for Maggie Smith's progress from diva to true friend, Hoffman has stripped away any hint of the temptation to camp it up. With the help of the other three, she confronts most profoundly the fuck-ups she's made.
The plot's main hurdle is whether or not the annual concert will proceed with a first-time reunion of the quartet reprising their roles from a memorable run of Rigoletto.
Actually, it doesn't matter whether they do or don't. They've achieved something even more memorable. Those chrysanthemum's truly are magnificent.
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