Just
as Arthur Miller in 1961 stripped bare Marilyn Monroe’s psychic fragility in
her last movie, “The Misfits,” a 2007 failure titled “Evening” unwittingly reveals
more about the actors than the tale it unfolds.
Watching
on Netflix out of curiosity about the production that brought together the
brilliant Claire Danes and her husband Hugh Dancy, I found real-life
fascination about others as well abounding in it.
In
what was labeled by the New York Times
a “miscalculation” and “kitsch romance,” Danes and Dancy fell in love despite a
horrendous lack of on-screen chemistry--she as a wobbly narcissist and he an
almost unplayable hysteric. Their scenes together, through no fault of theirs,
are too soggy to betray a spark.
But
there is so much more mismatching. Vanessa Redgrave unbelievably plays Danes as
an older woman, who would “rather eat a grand piano than surrender the
spotlight. Her character may be dying, but she’s dying importantly, with
flattering lighting and not a pearl of drool.”
Heartbreakingly,
Redgrave’s real-life daughter, the radiant Natasha Richardson, who would die
soon afterward in an accident, plays one of her grown children, full of life
and promise.
Late
on, Meryl Streep turns up to underact as Redgrave’s blowsy old friend, whose
younger embodiment is her own
daughter, a beautiful Mamie Gummer who marries the wrong man in the mishmash.
Other
talented actresses like Glenn Close, Eileen Atkins and Toni Collette emote but
without much purpose.
But
like “The Misfits,” “Evening” should be seen not as drama but unintentional biography.
Back then, Arthur Miller’s farewell to Marilyn was not only a cruel exposure of
an actress and a woman, it also revealed and probably even hastened the last
days of two movie icons, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.
Both are
occasions when the camera tells much more than those in front of or behind it consciously
mean to reveal. Incorrigible old movie-lovers can’t help relishing them.
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