1 Photo courtesy of rottentomatoes.com
Lonely old men and the people who love them
‘Starting Out in the Evening’ paints a grim but moving portrait of human relationships
By Beth Capper
Published: December 19th, 2007 | 1:45pm
About three years ago, in the midst of a very nasty breakup, I took a weeklong trip to Los Angeles and spent the whole time in movie theaters. It was during this week that I stumbled, quite unexpectedly, into an unknown film called The Talent Given Us by first-time director Andrew Wagner.
The Talent Given Us is a pseudo documentary in which the director casts his own family in the leading roles. The premise is simple: A cross-country road trip from New York to Los Angeles, dysfunctional family squabbles on the way, and, finally, a precise dissection of the variant human emotions that make up the characters in Wagner's offbeat family. Not an entirely original narrative structure for a young American indie filmmaker.
The dysfunctional family drama has been done time over, particularly in the films of Wes Anderson. Wagner's film, however, has resonated with me ever since. Perhaps it’s the way his characters capture a wild multitude of complex human emotions with just one expression, or the surprising range Wagner's family of non-actors had for communicating these emotions in the absence of professional training. I left with the feeling that I had just witnessed the debut of one of the most important American filmmakers to emerge in my lifetime.
Starting Out in the Evening is Wagner's much-anticipated (at least by me) second feature. Adapted from a heady novel by Brian Morton, relationships are again at the fore for Wagner and the film centers on four main characters — Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), an aged writer grappling with finishing what he knows will be his final novel; Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), a grad student writing her thesis on Schiller with the hope of reintroducing him to the public as an unsung literary legend; Ariel (Lili Taylor), Schiller's daughter who is turning 40 and is desperate to have a child; and Casey, Ariel's ex-lover. Ariel and Casey are still very much in love after a five-year separation but their disagreement about having children is a recurring problem, no matter how much they try to ignore it.
Complex emotions are still very much on show, which might have a lot to do with the age of Wagner's characters. With the exception of
Heather, who is in her early 20s, the cast members are all 40-plus. Where The Talent Given Us was often hilarious, due mainly to the outrageousness of Wagner's family, Starting Out in the Evening is a sad, slow baker — as sad and as slow as its ageing protagonist.
The film is almost Ingmar Bergman–esque in its realistic and agonizing study of Schiller's loneliness, and his relationship with Heather, who admires Schiller to the point of infatuation, but who also manipulates him for her own ends. Schiller both wants to believe that Heather's desire for him is real, while at the same time holding himself at a distance — which makes for some very uncomfortable sexually charged moments.
Starting Out in the Evening is an unusual, unsettling drama about the decisions we make and have to live with, and the complexity of love, both romantic and familial, as we move in to middle, and old, age. Look out for Wagner — I can sense there will be more to come.
Issue #34
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