Suffering from the early onset of Parkinson’s, one member’s tremors cause quite a quake in a quartet of musicians in the perfectly pitched PERFORMANCE (M) from writer director Yaron Zilberman.
The new film PEFORMANCE, also known as A LATE QUARTET, is the physicist turned film maker’s second film following the feature length documentary Watermarks, and demonstrates a scientific precision and rigour in screenplay and direction.
The superbly structured screenplay is splendidly served by a core quartet of accomplished actors.
As the fulcrum of the quartet, Peter, Christopher Walken is captivating with a persona and presence that resonates with a calming karma.
His one time student and founder of the group, Daniel, is played with simmering volatility by Mark Ivanir, profoundly fixated on the pursuit of perfection where technique has outstripped passion.
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keeler complete the quartet as married couple Robert and Juliette, their duet devolved into duel, exacerbated by the crisis confronting the quartet.
Tossed in to the tumult is Robert and Juliette’s daughter, Alexandra, played by the impressive Imogen Poots. Following in her parent’s profession, she has filial frustrations that overflow into the foursome’s ferment, a catalyst to the quarrelsome quartet’s current crossroads.
Violins and viola erupt into emotional violence. Juliette asks Robert “Do you really love me or am I convenient?” A devastating question to ask, and to be asked. Equally devastating is Alexandra’s statement to her mother, “I would have had an abortion.” With three quarters of the quartet imploding, it is the mellow cello who must call a halt to hostilities and strive to get the strings back into harmony.
PERFORMANCE is a deeply affecting film for anyone who has had at least 25 years of life experience. Inspired by and structured around Beethoven’s Opus 131 String Quartet in C-sharp minor, it is an intensely profound examination of personal and professional relationships, individuality and interdependence, the parent/child dynamic, art and, of course, music.
A striking element of the Opus 131 is that Beethoven indicated it should be played “attacca”, without a pause between its seven movements. When playing a piece for almost forty minutes without a break, the instruments are bound to go out of tune, each in a completely different way.
Writer director Yaron Zilberman felt that this was “the perfect metaphor for long term relationships, inevitably challenged and demanding a constant need for readjustment and fine tuning because of the myriad ways we change over long periods of time.”
(c) Richard Cotter