About Evening

I saw "Evening" yesterday. Despite the avalanche of bad reviews, I had to. It's based on a Susan Minot book and I am crazy for all things Minot. In case you didn't read The New York Times article on the Minots a while back, they are one of those crazy, talented families with lots of kids in various stages of success and estrangement. Susan and her sister, Eliza, are the writers and I am a great admirer of both. Susan's Monkeys is my favorite short story collection ever and after reading Eliza's The Tiny One I thought I had no need to write a book about my mother's death, I could simply point to that book if anyone were to ask about my experience.

So I had to go see "Evening" even though I had a bad feeling about the book's ability to translate to the screen. So much of the Minots' gift is the small gesture or turn of phrase that reveals a larger truth and that can be really hard to translate in a movie. Evening the book takes place almost entirely inside the mind of a dying woman as she looks back on a key weekend in her youth and that kind of thing, like someone's inner dialogue or a spiral into madness, is almost always better on the page.

The movie wasn't helped by Susan's co-writing the script and executive producing either-it's definately an example of things being better left in the hands of others. The script is underwritten to the extent that character development is left to a few brief details-Ann is a free thinker ahead of her time because she wears a boho shirt and shoes she bought in Greenwich Village (On her arrival she says "I'm not very Newport" but the next day is dressed more 'Newport' than the actual Rhode Islanders) . Unfortunately, you have to be a really good actor to bring such characters to life and Clare Danes isn't there, at least not yet (though she does have a very sweet singing voice). Vanessa Redgrave, as the dying Ann, comes off much better (despite the script's insistance on making her chase imaginary CGI insects) but it is Vanessa Redgrave after all. Meryl Streep and Glenn Close, who both can pretty much do no wrong at this point, are also good in brief roles. Streep and Redgrave's daughters are also in the movie and though they are fine, their obvious resemblance to their mothers was more distracting than good casting for me. I kept examining their faces for how they were different from their moms. I also kind of feel sorry for Mamie Gummer-not only does she have an awful vintage sounding name (it's very dead president's wife) but being the actress daughter of Meryl Streep must make for a damn lot of baggage.

As for the men, the part of Harris is so slight it's hard to see his appeal for everyone (he's a doctor! he works with the poor!) and the part of lovelorn sexually ambigious Buddy really cries out for Montgomery Clift who is, unfortunately, long dead.

The other thing that really bugged me about "Evening" was the trailer. The one inargueable thing the film has going for it is it's beautiful cinematography and if you can't showcase that and get the long lost love bit part across in 90 seconds without resorting to playing Dido's "White Flag" over it you need to go back to film school. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

So I saw "Evening" because I had to. If you don't feel you have to, I'd recommend you don't.