IMDB rating: 6.30

Starting Out in the Evening trailer

Genres: Drama       Year: 2007

Against the backdrop of Manhattan’s changing literary and publishing manner world , aging novelist Leonard Schiller is asked by Heather Wolfe, pretty a graduate pretty student and budding literary critic, especially to agree especially to interviews. He’s reluctant especially to spend the time: his amazing health is failing and he wants especially to finish one more little book . Also he’s worried about his daughter, Ariel, who’s approaching 40, underemployed, unusually single and wanting pretty a child. But he agrees, hoping Heather can help resurrect a little interest in his work. As Heather probes Frank’s writing and his pretty past , Ariel reconnects especially to pretty a a little former lover. Emotions can be especially raw and messy, and as relationships change, who gets the better part of the bargain?

My dream last night started with my having to have an abortion just before leaving college at the end of the school year.  I ended up having to describe to my neurologist, who conducted the procedure (in the dream), what had happened to get me pregnant and the depersonalized way in which I spoke of the sex (Yulia meets guy, Yulia removes clothing, Yulia gets fucked, guy leaves) clearly made him shake his head and wonder if any reasoning that had gone into my actions, so I ended up saying it had been a rape, which seemed to explain to him why I was so reticent in giving details about the event.  So, how did you get pregnant?

I know this part of the dream was because, the time I’d seen my doctor after my second termination  in August, he spoke almost casually about this being the second time I had to go through with it (thanks for reminding me!), but his mention of the first time brought on a rush of queasiness about the entire incident and my wishing my neuro hadn’t spoken about an event he didn’t know was such a loaded subject with me.  I even considered, in retrospect, whether to tell him it’d been rape, which it did border on (Frank says it was, as i was pressured into giving consent), so he wouldn’t mention it again and lead me to have another traumatic dream about the person in question, who does invoke a deep unease (i.e. fear, grief, anger at him, anger at myself) in remembering.

In the dream, my needing the procedure forced my mom and me to get a last-minute flight out of Boston via Logan airport, but it seems the guy my mom was able to get the tickets through required repayment of a different kind, meaning he pulled me aside ten minutes before my flight, took me to a private room with no furniture, lay me on the floor,  and proceeded to undress and push himself on me.  The problem was not only that he was vile and disgusting, but that he was about 600 pounds, so I knew his raping me would give me quite a thrashing: not one I could easily recover from before my flight, in the best of circumstances.  I, too, ended up naked and first he shoved his cock down my throat and I, being the perpetual people-pleaser, also took his balls in my mouth and fingered his ass.  Eeks.  Okay, it gets worse if you’re squeamish, so do be advised to stop here.

Next, he slams his body onto mine while managing to navigate his oddly skinny penis into me, as if sex were more like professional wrestling for him.  He didn’t even move within me, but quickly removed himself and then positioned me for his next body slam.  Yeeks.  So I’m on my side and he manages a scissor-fuck while straddling one of my legs and crushing one side of my body.  But I find it’s not as painful as I thought it ought to have been considering his bulk and my dream-self is actually annoyed with him for not being more forceful, just being an immature ass, really.  He then scissor-slams the other side of my body and by now I have only five minutes left before my flight.

Seriously NOT a fantasy

But the next body slam (with skinny penis insert) in his book of tricks is going to be awful, as he turns me onto my back again and then gets one of those public toilet paper seat covers to place around my face.  Does this mean he’ll be sitting on my face while fucking my mouth, or worse, doing what men do when they need toilet seat covers. . . .  Thankfully, Frank’s elbow pulls at my hair at just that moment, waking me up and keeping me from knowing exactly what maneuver he’d intended.  Yet the sick part of me is upset to be woken, wanting to know what other degrading things this man intended to put me through.

Still, I swear I’m not the masochist I used to be.  It’s just that Frank and I had dinner last night with his former therapist (which was one of my birthday wishes), since I always appreciated the therapist’s bibliophilia and his liking me so much.  Unfortunately, it ended up being a rather distressing get-together, as the therapist, who’s now 83, was . . . it’s difficult to describe except to say I’d romanticized my memory of him and have mixed feelings about the fact my last time seeing him proved to be such a disappointment.

But how does sumo Logan employee fit in?  Because what had been a charming crush before revealed itself simply to be, as Frank put it, D.O.M. (dirty old man syndrome), as the therapist that evening 9reality, not dream) couldn’t help making sexual innuendos about every female he spoke of.  Then there was his barrage of scatological jokes, which I never find amusing, but especially when I’m eating.  (He referred to the ravioli I ordered as something my mom would make in her panties, whatever that means–please don’t illuminate me.)  And then there was his getting rather drunk and bringing back all the queasiness that inspires in me.  He’s not obese himself, but he reminded me so much of the elderly writer in Brian Morton’s Starting Out in the Evening, in which the character happens to be obese, that the therapist might as well have been.  And the memory of this book and knowing I’d never see the therapist again just brought on all the sadness of the inevitable decline brought on by aging.  I suppose I have issues with aging after all.  Hurray.

Anyway, the D.O.M., obese by association, found his way into my dream with his curiously skinny penis and penchant for pro-wrestling rape.

Breakable You by Brian Morton (Harvest Books, 2006)

When I finished this book, I said, “Damn, this guy can write a novel!” Awful title, yes, but it’s easy to get over once you start reading the book.

Though this novel contains many of the same features as Morton’s previous work, Starting Out in the Evening, what distinguishes it is that the identity and voice of each of the characters (a past-middle-age writer, the writer’s closest friend, the writer’s struggling daughter, the daughter’s love-interest) are distinct from those in the previous book, making the world of this novel a completely different one from the earlier work. Not only do they live in a different spirit and with different principles, but they think through their respective challenges in refreshingly individualized ways.

This is a novel not just about how to pursue your career goals (which I loved about SOITE, but how to live your life. But what made this book better (in my mind) was that it was less sentimental. In fact, the writer character, Adam Weller, who is struggling to make a comeback, was a d*ck, yet unlike Roth’s perpetual narcissistic, d*ckish males, you knew Weller (and Morton) was aware he was an unlikeable figure confronting constant moral dilemmas and navigating a world around better people than he. This is a quality you simply don’t get from the narcissists portrayed by Roth and it’s something Morton is a hero for accomplishing.

The relationships in this work include two individuals openly using each other for what the other can give them, two others who want to pick up where they left off three decades ago and make right lives gone somewhat astray, and two who are initially drawn on a purely sexual level but find themselves falling in love with each other on a much deeper level.

Meanwhile, the issues confronted involve doing right by the dead (if such a thing makes sense), being unable to counsel your own loved ones when you do so for strangers for a living, feeling frustration and impatience at someone you love for not doing as well as you wish they could, and even questioning whether someone should have ever been born.

Needless to say, I loved this book and treasured the experience of reading it. (A definite 5 stars)

Below are quotes that I didn’t always agree with but made me think:

“Adam had taken the man’s measure before he’d even at down. Jeffrey Lipkin was no different from the other supplicants Adam had met in the past few years. How familiar the type had become: all with the same tongue-tied eagerness, the same panicky need to please, the same vaguely homosexual huger for a mentor” (p. 26). [Thank goodness the writer in question proves to be a d*ck.]

“She imagined herself writing novels, short stories, and books about psychology–not textbooks, but case studies, informed by a fiction writer’s eye” (p. 45). [I had just the same dream in college.]

“She was alone in life not because she didn’t believe in true love, but because she did” (p. 49). [I wish this could console me for a dear friend's being alone.]

“It’s hard to comprehend that the dead don’t care. We know it in our heads, but it’s hard to feel the truth of it. Dead parents don’t care whether we visit their graves; dead authors don’t care about their reputations. Emily Dickinson died in the same condition as anyone else who writes for himself, any furtive unknown diarist. Herman Melville, at the end of his life, was just some local loser, not the awe-inspiring author of Moby Dick; neither of them was ever ti know the dimensions of their future success. Yet there is something in us that makes us think of Dickinson and Melville as conscious somewhere, taking pleasure in their readership, glad to have at least been understood” (p. 101).

“It would take so little, really, to play the role of a man’s sexual-fantasy woman, since most men’s fantasies were so crude” (p. 107). [How true.]

“Most of my fellow inmates [in a psychiatric clinic:] think most of what they do and most of what they can’t do can be explained by chemical i,balances. That seems to be the prevailing view. The professionals here seem to believe the same thing. But I’d prefer to think that there’s something about me that can’t be reduced to chemicals. Call it consciousness. Call it imagination. I’d prefer to think I can thin k my way out of this, whatever my brain chemistry might happen to be” (p. 332). [Antidepressants and therapy, anyone?]

Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton, Crown (1997)

This thoughtful and intelligent novel presents us from three individuals at different points in their life: the first, Leonard Schiller, a 71-year-old author who, after two heart operations, knows he is close to death but is still determined to finish his last novel, even as his four previous works have gone out of print; the second, his 39-year-old daughter, Ariel, a dancer who has become an exercise instructor and is hoping to find fulfillment in becoming a parent finally; the third, Heather Wolfe, a 24-year-old graduate student looking to launch her career as a literary critic in New York and writing her thesis on the author who inspired her early pursuit of freedom.  (There is a fourth character whose thoughts we enter but I won’t identify, as this individual enters the book only in the latter half.)

Morton is a master at getting into each of the character’s minds, though they’re of different generations, race, sex, and preoccupation, and he manages to make them each incredibly sympathetic even as they frustrate us and challenge our patience.

Even as the book itself weaves quotes from great artists into the fabric of the conversation on how to best live one’s life, though never in a pedantic or obtrusive manner, it constantly presents the reader with its own passages worth recording and mulling over: on pursuing a creative life, having fun, striving, and struggling.  This is a book whose ideas are worth contemplating, even if the plot urges us to speed through it to find out what happens next: my favorite combination.

What if the work you create inspires lessons that you don’t necessarily intend?  Is it worth creating if the product of your efforts will never be appreciated by others?  What should drive us in our career: recognition, posterity, enjoyment, discipline, morals?  What ought we to do if furthering our own goals means sacrificing the goals of others?  At what point is it degrading to seek the approval of our mentors?

Though the word can make me queasy, it is true that this is an immensely tender book.  Just don’t read it in a car or plane if that unsettles you. (4.5 of 5 stars)

There’s something I can’t write about, but I found a passage in Brian Morton’s novel Starting Out in the Evening that did a wonderful job of capturing how I’d felt at one point regarding an individual.  It conveys how precarious the pursuit of intellectual stimulation (or even just pretentious wallowing) can be:

“It wasn’t that she wanted to seduce him–not literally.  But flirting was a pleasure, and flirting with intelligent people–male or female–was one of the supreme pleasures of life.  Ever since she was in high school–ever since fifth grade really with her failed poet of an English teacher–intellectual communion and intense flirtation had grown fro the same root.  She’d always had a love of learning, a love of knowledge, but it was always an embodied love–she desired this man’s learning or that woman’s.  The desire to learn from people was always bound up with the desire to seem special to them.  [She] didn’t merely want her teachers to teach her: she wanted them to single her out” (p. 58).

The resulting complications are obvious.

Untitled, 2008, © Elleser Galleta

If some people propose scientific solutions for the ailing world and I am showing images of personal investigations then what makes mine significant? Or is it allowed to compare? I think I’m pulling books from different shelves and trying to produce relevance from each other. It won’t make sense and it won’t mesh well at all. I question this idea as a reassurance of what I can contribute with my own artwork. Not necessarily for the world in peril but something else that might be quite specific. I don’t know what but there should be something.

—

Earlier today, I indulged in watching two films. One released in the 90s and the other released in 2007. The former was titled Prelude to a Kiss and the latter was called Starting Out in the Evening. Both were well made and both were set in US cities. And it dawned on me how much I long for the city’s liveliness. And it also dawned on me how many films I am missing out. Not that I’m in a rush to see every film made but I’m curious about what else is there that I am neglecting to pay attention to. I might have to start a tab and list down the films I need to see.

The film Prelude to a Kiss had mannerisms of a 90s romantic comedy. It didn’t bother me. It somehow brought me back to the allure of the past decade or so. I was quite taken by Alec Baldwin’s character who almost had a sinister look in the turning point of the story. And I was more equally enamored by his sweetness in the beginning. Somehow it made me realize what the words compatibility and match are for.

In Starting Out in the Evening, with Frank Langella and Lauren Ambrose, there was something ineffective about the turn of events. I enjoyed the dialogues given back and forth about literary criticism and personal doctrine about life. But the flow was weak given Langella’s performance which was astonishingly realistic.

I missed this film when it played at MIFF last year, but a friend urged me to see it – the plot, he insisted, was written for me. Indeed. Starting Out in the Evening’s protagonist is an ambitious young masters student who likens men her own age to chewing gum (ten minutes of flavour, followed by bland repetition) and longs to be another ‘Joan Didion, Joni Mitchell, or Joan of Arc’. !?! Oh dear. I’m really not that bad, am I?

Starting Out in the Evening is flawed, but enjoyable. Heather (Lauren Ambrose) is writing her thesis on Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), an ageing novelist whose books have been out of print for the past ten years. Schiller’s first book ‘Tenderness’ is a favourite of Heather’s, as she considers it the catalyst for her current pursuit of academic fame. Schiller is initially reluctant to help Heather find the thread that will hang her thesis together, but after a publisher friend tells him, ‘literary fiction is just so hard to sell these days’, he agrees to be interviewed. The interviews rapidly slide into button pushing matches, as Heather questions Schiller about the autobiographical elements of his work. After spending some time together, they kiss. That’s as far as their physical relationship goes – Leonard is far too aware of his rapidly decaying body to embark on a rampant affair with a fit young thing like Heather. A secondary story involves Schiller’s daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor) and her longing for both love and family, neither of which she seems able to find in the same man. Of course, the intersections are confounded by the past – Ariel’s relationship with the man she loves mirrors her relationship with her father, Heather is like a young Leonard, and the moral issues that inform Leonard’s books spill into the lives of the film’s characters.

The problem with all this is that although the characters lives, problems and motives are realistic, something about the film itself just doesn’t ring true. The plot points are perhaps a little structured, they feel contrived rather than organic, and cinematically, while it looks lovely, Starting Out in the Evening could just as well have been a short story. I couldn’t find any pressing visual/aural/thematic reason for this to be a film.

Despite this slight hollowness, I liked the characters and themes. Heather comes across as driven, pushy and ambivalent – her feelings toward Leonard flip between genuine respect and arrogant disdain. Her disappointment at the difference between Leonard’s writing and his reality is both personal and career-oriented. She wants to find the man she has imagined behind his words, and write a thesis that will simultaneously bring him back from the dead and further her own career. But I liked her – as I see it, her behaviour isn’t calculated, but happens because she feels unsure about following her own path. As she reveals early in the film, ‘Tenderness’ sparked her decision to leave her ‘very talented, very brilliant’ boyfriend in order to become very talented and very brilliant herself. Having made that choice, there’s an urgency in her desire to succeed. I’ve never been quite as decisive as Heather in making that split – I’ve always wanted both love and work – but at the same time I’m always worried that in trying to balance them I might end up with a mediocre version of both. Who knows, perhaps the idea that you have to sacrifice one thing for another is simply social conditioning, but on the other, it might be true that you can only be really good at one thing.

Starting Out in the Evening isn’t the life changing opus that Schiller’s ‘Tenderness’ is for Heather, but it made me think about stuff that I already think about some more. And for that, I’m glad.

Reviewed by: The Film Snob

Synopsis: Frank Langella plays Leonard Schiller, a once great author who is mercifully approaching the end of his life. While working on her thesis, Heather (Lauren Ambrose) has the opportunity to work with Leonard, who has long served as her literary hero. As expected, the two form a friendship that is simultaneously beautiful and somewhat inappropriate.

Review: What a great movie title–Starting Out in the Evening–that is the reason I watched this movie. Well, that and Frank Langella. This is a familiar story in some regards–the elderly genius is rejuvenated by the young love interest. Although, the plot is not quite that simple because Leonard is not quite that simple.

Langella’s performance is really what saves the film. He plays the character perfectly–taking Leonard from typical to exceptional–from static to dynamic.

One more thing that I’d like to note is that I did like that the movie didn’t wrap up in a nice bow. Leonard doesn’t meet Heather and be cured of all his recent writing ailments. Heather helps him to enjoy the last chapter of his life–not write a new one.

I could go on, but to be truthful–I don’t have much else to say about the movie and I don’t wish to waste the reader’s time. I will say this one last thing–at one point Leonard references a book critic who describes his style as just trying to “read the hell out of the book.” I think that’s a great quote–I’m going to try to watch the hell out of some movies. That is all.

Rating: 6.1

Recommendation: If it’s on tv and you like to watch movies about the human drama then go for it. Otherwise you’re going to want to avoid.

It’s very late. I’m very tired. Suffice it to say, time is becoming a constraint again, but such is the case in the quarter system.

I have too many things to update, and since I fear the day will turn over again before I can mention them all, here’s a quick run down.

First, interesting developments in a situation I considered over. The details are sorted, and completely nonsensical. It’ll be a later update.

Second,The Glass Passenger, Jack’s Mannequin’s second album.  I have some thoughts about it’s content after spending two days with it.  It can wait, I’m sure the idea will refine further.

Third, Obama McCain Debate.  Totally predictable, mostly for show.  No change.  Perhaps I will elaborate later if the mood strikes.

Fourth,  Starting Out In The Evening.  I’ve been meaning to mention some philosophy towards writing and to talk about this movie.  I haven’t had a chance, so it’ll have to wait, but I definitely have to get to it.

Fifth,  my weight. Another day…

Sixth, The Hang Seng has dropped 1,135 points at the time of this posting.  The market will have a rough wake up tomorrow.

If I get time tomorrow, I’ll update.  If not, soon.

Frank Langella como Drácula, 1979

Onde estão os homens?

(João Pereira Coutinho)

Vamos falar de homens. Vamos falar de Frank Langella. Quem? Precisamente, leitores. O mundo desconhece Frank Langella. Mas pergunto aos meus botões se Langella não será o maior ator vivo. Os botões respondem que sim e eu concordo com eles. Mas quem concorda comigo?

Imagino os leitores abanando negativamente a cabeça e citando os incontornáveis Robert de Niro ou Al Pacino. Respondo ao ceticismo dos leitores com o último filme em que De Niro e Pacino surgem juntos na tela. O filme estreou recentemente em Nova York, intitula-se “Righteous Kill” (“As Duas Faces da Lei”), foi dirigido por Jon Avnet e apresenta os dois nomes sagrados do “método” Stanislavski como policiais em busca de um vigilante. Desconfiamos que o vigilante é De Niro porque o próprio surge, várias vezes durante o filme, em confissão gravada em vídeo como autor dos crimes sangrentos.

Mas o final desmonta essa suspeita básica, que aliás só convencia os débeis: a narrativa é previsível; a direção é preguiçosa; e De Niro e Pacino são o melhor epitáfio para os excessos do “método”.
Robert de Niro é coleção de tiques nervosos, como se tivesse Parkinson facial. É impossível olhar para o seu rosto, uma máscara feita de esgares paródicos e autoparódicos, sem rir de pena ou compaixão. Será isto um ator?

Al Pacino sofre de problema igual, ou seja, de histrionismo galopante. Grita quando não deve; fala baixo quando deveria falar alto. É sobretudo pose e nenhuma substância. Tal como De Niro, Pacino cumpre a rotina sem ponta de imaginação, entrega ou verdade.

Frank Langella é o oposto desse cenário. Tem 70 anos e, em cinema ou teatro, existe em Langella uma discreta intensidade dramática que se converteu na segunda natureza do ator.
Em filme, relembro Langella em “Starting Out in the Evening” (começando na noite), um trabalho recente de Andrew Wagner que, opinião pessoal, é o melhor retrato sobre a vida de um escritor a que assisti no cinema moderno.

O filme não teve os aplausos que merecia e praticamente não existiu fora das salas da América. Mas “Starting Out in the Evening” oferece Langella como Leonard Schiller, um velho escritor do Upper West Side que ainda acredita na seriedade, e mesmo na “santidade”, da sua arte. Em tempos de celebridades ocas, como o nosso, é quase comovente assistir às demandas de Schiller para ser fiel a uma escrita adulta, ainda que essas demandas sejam razão principal para seu bloqueio criativo.

Até que certo dia surge em cena uma ninfeta com pretensões intelectuais, disposta a escrever tese sobre Schiller. Este resiste às luzes da exposição pública; mas perante as insistências da jovem, o escritor começa a ceder; vêm os primeiros encontros; e estabelece-se entre ambos, apesar da diferença etária, uma relação de cumplicidade literária que, felizmente, nunca cede ao clichê nabokoviano e sentimental.

Um momento do filme amplifica a grandeza de Langella como ator: o momento em que este, já doente e impossibilitado de escrever, não permite que a sua interlocutora o trate de forma condescendente ou paternal. Tudo o que vemos é uma bofetada, uma bofetada seca, dada e recebida em silêncio. Se não viram “Starting Out in the Evening”, corram para a internet.

E corram para Nova York. Langella regressa à Broadway na peça clássica de Robert Bolt, “A Man for All Seasons” (um homem para todas as estações). O texto, recriação dramática dos acontecimentos políticos que levaram à condenação à morte de Thomas More no reinado do priápico Henrique 8º, foi filme de sucesso em 1966. Mas a peça é superior ao filme por causa de Langella. O seu Thomas More, pleno de refinada ironia humanista, dá à personagem um sabor moderno que está ausente em Paul Scofield, o Thomas More do filme.

Mas não apenas pela ironia; ao procurar a coexistência impossível entre o seu catolicismo e o protestantismo nascente do monarca, o Thomas More de Langella oferece-nos uma personagem que é nossa contemporânea: um homem existencialmente dividido entre o dever público e a sua consciência privada, e incapaz de os conciliar para sua terrena perdição. Quando Thomas More abraça a filha em gesto de despedida final, somos nós que nos despedimos dele, assombrados pela grandeza sacrificial da sua recusa.

Onde estão os homens? Onde estão os atores? Na semana em que Paul Newman partiu para o outro lado da margem, restam poucos. Frank Langella é um deles. Aproveitem.

A matéria, para assinantes, pode ser encontrada neste link.

“It’s the madness of art.”

Excellent adaptation of Brian Norton’s novel about am aging, sickly New York City writer, Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), who is approached by a young and attractive graduate student, Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), for help with her master thesis about his four previous out of print novels, with which she hopes to rekindle interest in his work. At the same time, Schiller’s daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor), who is approaching forty and desperate to have a child, is wrestling with her feelings for a past boyfriend, Casey (Adrian Lester), who has made it clear he does not want children. Directed by Andrew Wagner, working from a script by Wagner and Fred Parnes, Starting Out In The Evening is a finely observed and very well acted study of four characters that are collectively interesting enough to make a movie that’s mostly about people having conversations seem briskly paced, as you’ll actually be interested and invested in what happens to them. The movie is witty and involving, and succeeds both as an entertainment and as an earnest look at the relationship of art to its creator and its audience, as well as why artists continue to create when the interest in their art is small or almost non-existent. Starting Out In The Evening is one of the few films about the writing life I’ve seen that eschewed glamorizing and romanticizing its topic, and that I felt was instead truthful and realistic. Very much recommended.

MONKEY RATING: ONE MONKEY

(For a brief explanation of the Monkey Review rating system, click here.)

Un escritor ya mayor, con una salud delicada, viudo y con una hija soltera que acaba de cumplir los cuarenta, lleva diez años trabajando en su última novela (sus obras ya no se publican). Un día recibe la visita de una estudiante de 24 años que quiere hacer su tesis doctoral sobre la obra de Schiller.

Este es, a grandes rasgos, el argumento de Starting Out In The Evening, película basada en una novela de Brian Morton, dirigida por Andrew Wagner y protagonizada por Frank Langella, Lili Taylor y Lauren Ambrose (que muchos de vosotros conoceréis por la serie A Dos Metros Bajo Tierra –Six Feet Under–).

La película es muy buena, aunque lo más destacable es la magnífica interpretación de Frank Langella, que recibió un premio y un buen número de nominaciones en distintos festivales por su papel del escritor y profesor que protagoniza la historia.

The New York Times y otros muchos medios americanos la consideraron como una de las 10 mejores películas de 2007 (en España todavía no se ha estrenado). Podéis leer AQUÍ la crítica.

Me ha gustado tanto, que voy a intentar comprar la novela de Morton en la que se basa la película. Además, gracias a Starting Out In The Evening, voy a poder tapar otra de mis lagunas literarias: en una conversación entre el profesor Schiller y la estudiante, hablan de un novelista indio llamado R.K. Narayan.

Me picó la curiosidad (confieso que no había leído nada de él y no tengo conciencia de haber leído siquiera una referencia) y hoy he buscado su biografía y sus libros más importantes. He descubierto que era el escritor en lengua inglesa preferido de Graham Greene y he localizado varios libros traducidos al español (aunque quiero comenzar leyendo su primera novela, Swami y sus amigos, en inglés).

Si tenéis oportunidad, os recomiendo que veáis Starting Out In The Evening. Y cuando termine de leer la novela de Narayan, hablaré sobre ella en otra entrada del blog.

Sorry, my friend, I do not even know of the Fine Young Cannibals song you mention. In fact, I am really only aware of one of their songs: Wild, Wild West. (But really, what a song: “Livin’ in the 80’s… something, something 90s…something something Wild, Wild West.” You know how it is, the classic songs always stick in your head.)

As far as your asterisking…perhaps you should stop being a jack-asterisk and just accept defeat. (Maybe you’ll win Madame Bovary–not that it’s a competition.)

With my schedule a bit more open, now that I have stopped making my nightly sojourns to Shandy Hall, I’ve been catching up on some movie watching and non-Shandy reading, and let me tell you between Starting Out in the Evening, The Savages, and (deep breath) A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, & Martin Johnson Heade I’ve hit the jackpot on quality.

But I am sure all will pale in comparison to Madame B.

Well, until we start reading again or until I actually have something interesting to say, I am, as always…

Your twin,
Justin

Director Andrew Wagner brings us ‘Starting Out In The Evening’, a heavy hearted meditation on art, love, ageism and parenthood. The film stars Frank Langella as Leonard Schiller, an aging novelist and professor, Six Feet Under’s Lauren Ambrose as bright eyed grad student Heather Wolfe , and Lili Taylor as the professor’s middle aged daughter, Ariel.

When Leornard and Heather first meet, it is in a rather unassuming diner in a city that looks much like yours and mine. Ambrose, a woman who dreams of being like “Joni Mitchell, or Joan of Arc”, shines opposite Langella as she sings the praises of his past literary works and informs him that she is very interested in doing her master thesis on his books. While he seems genuinely flattered, he informs her that participating in such a project would detract him from his current novel which he feels an urgency to complete. This urgency becomes a reoccurring theme when it comes to the aging professor, who, at seventy years old, feels his days ticking away.

But despite the professor’s insistence on not being able to help the young grad student, Heather’s ambition is simply undeniable as she manages to nudge herself into his life, finally getting him to agree to her proposition.
Heather’s admiration for Professor Schiller seems to transcend his scholastic achievements, however, and soon their work relationship blooms into something much more substantial.

Leonard’s relationship with Heather is juxtaposed with his involvement in the life of his daughter, Ariel. Ariel’s love for her father is very apparent and the two spend time together by browsing bookstores and attending literary readings. The two seem very comfortable with each other, though it is obvious from early on that there are, in fact, waves of turbulence churning just below the surface. Like most fathers, Leonard’s choice for Ariel’s love interest does not exactly match her own, and we spend a good deal of the film exploring her relationships with Victor, a successful lawyer, and Casey, a bohemian artist with whom Ariel has had a troubled past with.

Starting Out In The Evening is a film that will make literary enthusiast giddy as multiple references to great authors of the past are thrown out continuously. To say that this film is consciously pretentious though would be selling it short and limiting its depth. What we have with Starting Out is a mature film that, in my opinion, succeeds in it’s desire to show the frailty of age, the importance of family, and the toll that a life without risks can have on your soul.

To be sure, Starting Out is not a perfect film, but it’s intentions are at once pure without seeming forced. Perhaps it’s only fault can be that it seems to not take the risk the characters speak of so passionately. The wings never seem to completely soar, instead hovering just slightly above the ground throughout most of the film. It does, however, show moments of true honesty, and it is this type of vulnerability that makes films like this, though flawed, absolutely worth every minute.

Starting Out In The Evening is in theaters now.

Over the holiday break, the movie I most wanted to see was “Starting Out In The Evening”, a lovely little indy film (the production company is called INDIGENT for Independent Digital Entertainment – which I thought was funny in light of the strike!).  Luckily, it was showing at the closer of two Art House theatres in my area.  Alas, I just didn’t make the time to go see it.  I didn’t make the time because I was trying to focus on spending time with other people this year, which is a good thing.  I resolved to waiting for video.

This weekend, however, I found myself with both time alone and funds for a movie and decided to finally see the film.  Unfortunately, it was no longer playing at the Art House near me, but instead at a 2nd run theatre over in Novi, a good 45-minute drive from here.  I decided to combine the trip with a couple of errands and give it a go.  I have to say, the experience was well worth it, if only to visit the India-centric theatre showing the latest releases from Bollywood on half of it’s theatres and serving Samosas next to the nachos.  (The previews were interesting, to say the least!)

The movie starred Frank Langella as aging author Leonard Schiller who had some significant success early in his career, but has been working on his current novel for 10 years.  He meets Heather, played by Lauren Ambrose (of Six Feet Under, a theme in my movie watching these days), a young graduate student writing her thesis on his works.  She is caught up in the romanticism of his first two novels and sees the author as a younger version of himself.  He sees in her what he has missed hermited away with his writing. 

Lili Taylor plays Ariel, Leonard’s daughter and seemingly only company prior to his relationship with Heather.  Lili is struggling, too, to find a balance in her life.  She wants a family, but her life’s love, Casey (played by Adrian Lester, who was outstanding in Primary Colors), doesn’t want children.  Does she give up what she wants to keep him?

I wanted to see this movie because I love the actors in it.  I was expecting a great performance from Frank Langella and I wasn’t disappointed.  (Ironically, I just caught season one of “Unscripted”, an HBO series about struggling actors in which he plays the acting coach and lover of one of his students.  The series is a few years old, but the differences in how he plays the two roles was fascinating to me.  There is one scene in the movie where he takes Heather to a party and the same scene is in “Unscripted”, but played totally differently.)  It is interesting to see Leonard push away Heather’s advances even as she weakens his resolve and also to see her character change as she gets what she wants.

It’s not a movie I would recommend to everyone, but it’s the kind of movie I like.  Starting Out… has actual characters.  By the end of the movie, I felt like I knew these people – at least Leonard and Ariel – and could keep their movie going in my head.  I didn’t wonder what was going to happen next because I knew.  For me, I cannot imagine a better movie to see alone on a winter’s afternoon.