"A Late Quartet"

I sat still as "A Late Quartet" ended, the credits began to roll, and I soaked in Beethoven's Opus 131, String Quartet #14.  In Beethoven's canon, it is a late quartet and the string quartet featured in this movie are about to disband/reconfigure, making them a late quartet.

For me, there was another late quartet in this movie.  It was a quartet of aged artists:  Pablo Casals, Rembrandt, Beethoven, and the movie's central character, Peter Mitchell (played by Christopher Walken).

The movie focuses on Peter Mitchell's aging -- he is the oldest member, by far, of the string quartet, Fugue, featured in the story.

But it also features much discussion of Beethoven's late quartet, Opus 131, and how his departure from the conventional quartet structure, his insistence that it be played without pause, and the mysterious melancholy of the piece makes it difficult and beautiful to play.

(If you've got forty minutes and want to listen to it, here it is):



Then, during the movie, as if to echo the reality of aging that Beethoven explores, the aging Peter and the violist Juliette (played by Catherine Keener) are at the Frick collection and stop in front of Rembrant's 1658 self-portrait.  Here, as in Beethoven's quartet, the artist explores his confidence, his artistic power, while simultaneously exploring his anxiety about those powers, as well as his anxiety about his life, which may be diminishing, possibly nearing its end.



My favorite moment in the movie occurred when Peter Mitchell, as he instructs a college-aged string quartet,  stops them after Alexandra (the daughter of the Fugue's married couple) lambasts the cellist for playing too emotionally. 

Peter recalls his first meeting, as a young cellist, with Pablo Casals. In a private lesson, Peter played some passages of Bach for Casals and, in his mind, played them terribly.  But, Casals praised him and for years Peter was incensed about what he regarded as Casals insincerity.  Later in life, as a colleague of Casals, he confronted Casals about this supposed insincerity, and Casals stiffened, telling Peter Mitchell that any moron can find what's wrong, find the flaws in what someone plays.  Then he explained, all these years later, what he had admired in the young Peter's playing.

In this last stage of his life, this was the wisdom Peter Mitchell carried forward from what he learned from the aged Casals:

Any moron can find flaws.  The best teachers encourage what's good, what's strong in a player.

I loved hearing this.  It's been my approach to teaching for many years.  It's also my approach to movie viewing.

If I cared to, I could tell you about what I thought were flaws in "A Late Quartet".  But, as the movie ended, I was tearing up.  I was moved.  The emotional strengths of the movie were what mattered most, especially, for me, as the movie explored the aging of the older man, Peter, as well as his middle-aged colleagues in the quartet.

I never recommend movies.  I am too positive about movies and enjoy them too much to make recommendations.

All I can say is that I was very happy that at the end of "A Late Quartet" I was moved.  I was very happy that I'd decided to spend the late afternoon of my birthday watching it.

And that I left the theater reveling in what was powerful in the movie.

Its flaws melted away.