Evening

Some day, there will be a serious summer movie about all the Big Issues (life and death, love and loss) that satisfies a thought-provoking audience’s appetite and counter-balance all the explosive-packed, CG-aided, testosterone-heavy summer blockbusters.

Evening is not that movie. It has many wonderful moments but as a whole is disappointingly unsatisfactory. As Ann Grant (played by Vanessa Redgrave) is on her death bed, she looks back on her life and in particular, one fateful weekend of some 50 years ago.

In her flashback, young Ann is played by radiant Claire Danes and Danes is the main reason to watch this movie. She is not a traditional glamorous Hollywood beauty, but her freshness and vivacity light up the screen and in all her scenes I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The film is based on Susan Minot’s same-name bestseller and adapted by her with the help of Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours. I have not read the book, but the movie feels like there are too many loose ends and it should be much tighter structurally. Also this is one film that should be told in a straight-forward way instead of frequent flash-backs. Honestly I don’t care much about the life of Ann’s two daughters. Their squabbles are trite and familiar. Whenever I just got interested in the goings-on during that fateful weekend, director Lajos Koltai would pull me back to Ann’s deathbed and the clash between the sisters downstairs. After a while it gets pretty frustrating.

There are some major character inconsistencies and mind boggling plot points. The fateful weekend in Ann’s life occurs when she goes to her best friend Lila’s wedding. She is one of the bridesmaids at the wedding. Lila’s little brother Buddy, has apparently been in love with Ann ever since he met her, but Ann brushes off any romantic suggestions by others and considers Buddy merely as her best friend. Only in movies and books can a person be so blind. It is also very obvious that Lila does not love her new husband, but is actually in love with Harris whom Ann is also immensely attracted to upon their first meeting. It seems awfully insensitive for Harris and Ann to publicly display their affection right in front of Lila and Buddy at Lila’s wedding reception, especially since Harris and Ann have only known each other for maybe a day or two, and let’s not forget it, that they are Lila and Buddy’s best friends, best friends just don’t do things like that.

Koltai has been a cinematographer for nearly forty years and his experience shows in this picture. The coast of Rhode Island captured in this film is absolutely gorgeous and the contrast heightens the tragedy. Evening also features some beautiful music. At times the theme melody gets a bit overbearing, but overall Jan A.P. Kaczmarek’s composition touches on the right emotional tone. The soundtrack for the movie is a must-have for jazz and old pop fans. It contains such standards as Time After Time and I’ve Got the World on a String. Danes amazes me with her rendition of Time After Time and she strikes all the right poses of a seductive cabaret singer.

Evening has an impressive a female cast including two pairs of mother-daughter teams. Redgrave’s daughter Natasha Richardson plays her older daughter Constance in the movie and Toni Collette as the rebellious younger one Nina. Richardson’s face looks like one-cosmetic-surgery-too-many; her expression is pretty much frozen on her face. Even though she is the older sister, her face looks unnaturally smooth compared with Collette’s age appropriate lines and bags under her eyes. Meryl Streep plays old Lila and her daughter Mamie Gummer is the young Lila. There are some strong resemblances between mother and daughter, and Gummer holds her own in a stellar cast and gives a bittersweet performance. Streep has only one major scene with Redgrave at her deathbed, but that scene is one of the best written ones in the movie. In their short conversation, they dispense some hard-earned wisdom about life and death, love and loss.

The movie would have been a wonderful journey if the filmmakers had let Danes and Redgrave lead us through Ann’s whole life story. Instead, Redgrave spends most of her time in a morbid upstairs bedroom. At the end of the movie, I was grateful that the camera cut away to the serene Rhode Island coast rather than entering Ann’s bedroom for the umpteenth time. I secretly wished to hasten Ann’s death. It is not Redgrave’s fragile and deflated Ann I want to remember; it is Danes’ brilliant and confident Ann I would like to keep in my mind. And that is the major flaw of this movie: too much lament, not enough zest.