Movies dealing with death in flashback are becoming a genre unto themselves, and one might expect an effort involving powerhouse names such as Meryl Streep, Vanessa Redgrave, and Glenn Close would produce a gold standard for the class. But "Evening" is a success only in part, weighed down too heavily by its own maudlin introspections and an unwieldy confluence of current-day and flashback moments. The result is an uneven and unsatisfying mix that, worst of all, runs about 30 minutes longer than necessary.
"Evening," to be sure, is a wonderfully photographed effort, but the photography cannot overcome a fractious screenplay that can't decide if it wants to tell a retrospective tale about an ending life, or an introspective tale about the impact that life had on her children. The result is that neither tale is told particularly well. As the story edges ever more tediously to its end, we find that Glenn Close is almost entirely wasted, that Meryl Streep has only one meaningful scene that is so awkwardly directed and - again - tediously executed that the viewer is left begging for a timely resolution that, in all honesty, never really comes.
"Evening" is a work that could have lived the potential held by its cast if its story had held the same potential. As it ends, it is only another average entry in an expanding genre.
-intrepid6
"Evening," to be sure, is a wonderfully photographed effort, but the photography cannot overcome a fractious screenplay that can't decide if it wants to tell a retrospective tale about an ending life, or an introspective tale about the impact that life had on her children. The result is that neither tale is told particularly well. As the story edges ever more tediously to its end, we find that Glenn Close is almost entirely wasted, that Meryl Streep has only one meaningful scene that is so awkwardly directed and - again - tediously executed that the viewer is left begging for a timely resolution that, in all honesty, never really comes.
"Evening" is a work that could have lived the potential held by its cast if its story had held the same potential. As it ends, it is only another average entry in an expanding genre.
-intrepid6