Much of it Turns Out Not to Matter

Lajos Kotai's film Evening, based on a Susan Minott novel, is really not a very good film. It seems very familiar in its telling of an elderly woman dying of a terminal disease, at home, being cared for by a night nurse and visited daily by her two daughters. The dying woman (Vanessa Redgrave) floats in and out of reality, fantasy and her memories of 50 years ago when she was the Maid of Honor at her best friend's wedding in Newport, Rhode Island. Claire Danes plays Ann Lord, the dying woman, in the flashback segments of the film. Ann is a young woman who dreams of becoming a professional singer and feels a bit out of place amongst the rich family and friends of her friend Lila (Mamie Gummer). She is connected to the family not only by her friendship with Lila, but with Lila's younger brother Buddy, whom Ann was close friends with in school. Buddy (Hugh Dancy) is high spirited, a dreamer, rebel to the family hopes and an alcoholic. He does not believe in his sister's love for her attended groom and believes she truly loves Harris (Patrick Wilson), the son of their housekeeper, who is, also, attending the wedding and is a physician. Glenn Close is the patrician mother of Lila and Buddy and Barry Bostwick cuts an imposing figure as the cliche stolid WASPish father. The film unfolds with the Chekovian equations of A loves B, but really loves C who loves B that adds up to a grandiose Lifetime-style cable movie

The familiar qualities of Evening recall the soap opera-ish films of the late 1940s and, especially, the 1950s. One could see this starring Bette Davis or Joan Crawford in the '40s; Jane Wyman or a myriad of other actresses of the '50s period. Perhaps, Rock Hudson as Harris and James Dean as Buddy ... only the rather blatant hetero and homosexual currents would not surface as easily and would be swimming below the film's water line of plot. You see, Buddy loves Ann and he loves Harris and he drinks and has awkward alcohol infused outbursts at family dinner parties about love and society's false values. Buddy is the most interesting character in this film and his layers of emotion and hurt are greatly exposed by Hugh Dancy. Most of the other characters are bores and cardboard figures. I could not possibly see what Ann or Lila or Buddy saw in their love for Harris. He is as bland as a glass of warm 1% milk. Buddy's character reminded me of Lew Ayres' closeted younger boozy sibling of Katharine Hepburn in Holiday, though more nuanced and serious. The film would have, if made in the eras I referenced, been soaked in lingering soft focus shots and sweeping lavish strings and piano from a studio orchestra (we get, instead, an incongruous recording of Michael Buble singing a standard as Ann and Buddy dance lightheartedly). In the '50s this might have been made by Douglas Sirk and produced by Ross Hunter. Evening wants to be much more important than those soaps of the past cinema. It wants to "say" something. What it hammers into your head at the conclusion is that we fret and worry and wonder about the supposed mistakes we make in life, but that whatever road we take we will find happiness of a sort. Life is a culmination of mistakes that result in the life we have and that we should cherish. Relationships provide children and friends and memories that make us happy ... no matter what errors brought us to that point.

Evening was a disappointment and it only provided a few glimmers of good acting. What the film did most of all for me was something that even a bad film can do; spark memory and allow you to relate. During my entire viewing of Evening, I thought back to incidents in my own life that these cinema ciphers enacted on the screen. It is so strange how film, if you allow it to envelop you, even if it isn't very good, can still affect you. Mediocre films can be easily ignored and that veil of separating yourself from your place in current time can be dispelled so easily by a film's failure to entrance a viewer. The magic was there in Evening and it worked. Having a parent die slowly and trying to understand her musings as you sit beside her, wondering what her life was really like as a younger person (we rarely think of our parents as once young); these scenes in the film struck me strongly.

But, most of all, the thoughts of the younger Me and my relationships years ago with a family of my own acquaintance. My friendships with those people and the people I met through them; people I loved and those I disliked and who all changed me in some way and the way I thought about my true self. The hurts felt by Ann and Buddy; the misunderstandings and not speaking your mind and the guilt were all there on the screen and igniting the fuses of memory in my mind. Certain little incidents or scenes in the film made each of those memories explode ... thoughts I might express through the delirium of the twilight moments of my own end; secrets told to no one and known but to a few ... especially the love we feel and not speak of or act upon with the people we encounter in life or with our relations and parents ... and the moments of having our talents displayed to others who applaud us and see bright futures on the horizon that only turn to haze and clouds. Maybe, as the film tries to tell us, those mistakes don't really matter. Those incidents were wonderful, painful and educational, but whatever they meant at the time, what we thought to be so important, dismissive or earth shaking ... we still survive. Maybe what we did do or didn't was meant to happen and brought us to where we are today. We can still look back and regret and cherish and wonder what if ...? Maybe we can learn and hold dear what we did gain or what steps led us to where we now stand or those whom we have met and cared for even if we hadn't taken those other roads. I don't know if that is all true. But, I do know Evening provided the magic of taking me back to my past and making me think ... and that is one of the reasons why I love movies.