Dustin Hoffman perfectly on song with Quartet
A tale of music and aging – with a touch of crankiness
Quartet
Starring: Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Tom Courtenay, Patricia Collins Directed by: Dustin Hoffman Running time: 98 minutes
Parental guidance: Coarse language, adult situations
Playing at: Cavendish, Colossus, Forum cinemas
After a lifetime of complaining about his directors, Dustin Hoffman has finally stepped behind the camera himself, and it turns out he knew exactly what he was talking about: Quartet, his filmmaking debut at the tender age of 75, is a gentle, funny and occasionally ribald drama that celebrates both music and old age.
Oddly, it is an English film, rather than an American one, but beyond the Masterpiece Theatre set design there lies a cunning tribute to the easy command of experienced actors and to the art that brought them there.
It’s set in the fictional Beecham House, a magisterial home for retired musicians somewhere in Britain and named after the famous conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (“His father made laxatives,” says Maggie Smith, the dowager queen of geezer cinema, here playing an imperious old diva named Jean. “Naming a nursing home after him is frighteningly apt.”)
A group of former opera singers live in uneasy companionship, given the realities — a faint tendency to crankiness, a touch of senility, the occasional attack of I’m-too-old-for-this selfishness — of such a place.
The screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on his play, reminds us an old folks’ home is much like a high school, with similar jealousies, territorial imperatives and tempers in the eating room.
Hoffman has populated the place with a collection of actual retired musicians, notably soprano Dame Gwyneth Jones, who play and sing throughout the film and who co-star in the closing credits with old photographs of themselves.
In the foreground is a grand assortment of scene-stealers; indeed, scenes are stolen so often in Quartet that the cumulative effect is of evanescence, as if the movie itself has been quietly taken away, leaving only a few stray Verdi arias and the floating smile of accomplishment.
Most of this theft is done by the quartet of the title. Billy Connolly is Wilf, a naughty old man whose twinkly flirtations and indecent proposals — he invites female staff members to enjoy some “rumpy-bumpy” — are an irresistible reminder of the deathless libido, or at least of its shadow.
Tom Courtenay, looking groomed and regal in a stylish scarf, is his friend Reggie, an old tenor still keeping in the game by learning the ins and outs of rap music for the regular music appreciation classes he gives for students (“Lady Ga-Who?”) Reggie is elegance itself, but we see a hidden pain when he begins to insult one of the home’s waitresses, who gives him apricot jam rather than marmalade.
Their old-boy roughness is softened by Pauline Collins as Cissy, a slightly addled old singer who veers into something approaching Alzheimer’s every once in a while. Cissy scurries about Beecham House with a giant handbag, getting everything charmingly wrong, until she gets it charmingly right.
Their uneasy harmony — in every sense — is tipped when Jean moves in: a formidable opera star, now fallen on hard times and furthermore an old flame of Reggie’s, who doesn’t seem to have forgiven her for some ancient romantic betrayal.
Smith moves through the film with the haughty bearing of a luxury cruise ship whose captain has decided he will ignore warnings of icebergs ahead.
Hoffman is clearly crazy about all of them, and he gives them room both to inhale the exotic sounds of classical music, beautifully played and sung by the actual musicians around them, and to indulge the slightly less rarefied tantrums to which they are all prone. This means that not every moment is fully occupied, and some of that slack is taken up by Michael Gambon as Cedric (“See-dric,” he corrects everyone), an impresario in caftans and rude manners who adds a note of camp.
Quartet is one of those movies whose plot swings on a gala concert, in this case a tribute to Verdi that will raise enough money to keep Beecham House in business.
It’s a thin device, but it does allow Cedric to vamp noisily around the home, telling the Gilbert and Sullivan acts to shut up. It’s also a chance for Wilf, Reggie, Cissy and Jean to reunite for their famous quartet from Rigoletto, if only they can talk Jean into ignoring the frailties of age and sing again.
It’s something of a fantasy — the grand home, the witty companionship, the gorgeous music-making — but it’s fantasy of the best kind.
“Old age is not for sissies,” Cissy says, despite the fact that in her case, it clearly is. It is also for dreamers.