Movie Review: Evening

Thursday night after work I went to a free screening of the new movie Evening starring Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Meryl Streep and Glenn Close.

Just a quick word about screenings in New York, they are a mad house. The movie started at 7 p.m. but if you hadn't gotten on line by 6 p.m. you probably weren't going to get in to the movie. Plus they were doing a screening of Transformers the same night so the two lines kept getting confused.

I knew almost nothing about this movie, which is a good thing, just that it was probably going to be sad.

Evening is the story of a woman on her deathbed who amidst the delirium and images of her past full life relives a love affair she had forty years earlier, when at twenty-five she attended the wedding of her best friend on an island in Maine. As her children wait and tend to her, she remembers minutely the details of those three days when she met a man, a time which emerges from marriages and divorces and children as being the high point of her life.

The screenplay was written by Michael Cunningham who wrote The Hours. If you didn't like that movie, you are definitely not going to like Evening.

I actually liked it alot. It wasn't perfect but it managed to capture a time and a place in a very real way. The only thing I didn't like was why everyone was so obsessed with Harris. I just didn't get and I'm not sure if it's the character in the book or the performance of Patrick Wilson. We only hear about his relationships with Buddy and Lila, there's only a quick glimpse in the wedding scenes.

Also, it's never spoken why Ann and Harris don't get together. Is it because of what happened to Buddy? The guilt? You never know or why she ends up married to the best man at the wedding.

Casting Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie to play the younger version of her character was an inspired choice. What surprised me the most about this movie was the performance of Hugh Dancy as Buddy, Lila's brother. He's always seemed sort of a light weight actor to me, but his performance in this movie moved beyond the shallow. I even liked Claire Danes which is unusual for me. Like Natalie Portman, she's a little bit hit or miss in her performances. It was great to see Barry Bostwick and Glenn Close in small but pivotal parts in the movie and the great Eileen Atkins.

Of course, I know have to go out and buy the book, to see how different it is than the movie, and what they had to leave out. Still, I would give this movie a B+. I'm surprised actually that they released in the summer amidst all the summer sequels and fluff. It would be shame if Vanessa Redgrave's performance got lost in the shuffle at awards time. Watching her was like watching a master class in acting.

Thanks for reading!

EKM