Yaron Zilberman’s ‘A Late Quartet’

Back in January I described Dustin Hoffman’s film Quartet, set in a retirement home in the English countryside in summer, as British cinema geriatrica. Although A Late Quartet is similar in name and again is about a musical quartet, the resemblance stops there. The members of Zilberman’s Fugue Quartet are at their professional peak and his film charts their way through interlocking personal and professional crises. A Late Quartet is set in the sort of Manhattan winter which Bellows would have recognised and in the sort of affluent and cultured milieu (a glimpse of Holbein’s Thomas More at one point) which is familiar from Woody Allen’s more serious pieces. I lack the musical knowledge to fully appreciate the metaphorical significance of Beethoven’s Opus 131 String Quartet No. 14 in C sharp minor and I’m too ignorant to be distracted by the actors having to mimic playing. Anyone interested in such issues should read elsewhere, eg Clarrissa Tan’s review in the Spectator and the comment on it by “Salieri”. But I can offer comment on the acting which I thought was uniformly good, in particular it was a pleasure to see Philip Seymour Hoffman again after 2011’s Ides of March.

However, someone whose opinions I usually respect hated Zilberman’s film. Norman Geras’s post about it on Normblog begins “Spoiler herein, if this thing is capable of actually being spoiled.” so I have been selective:

One of the worst experiences I've had in the cinema in recent times was going to see A Late Quartet on Saturday. It was excruciatingly awful: clichéd, plot-predictable, musically refined sensibilities for those who really know how to feel, and laid on like honey and peanut butter; with one scene in which the movie basically collapses, as mother visits daughter, … . Readers, I cringe to remember it.

And he prays in aid the review in the New Statesman by Ryan Gilbey:

A Late Quartet is a terrible film—it’s like an idiots’ Amour. It does, though, feature an outstanding performance by Christopher Walken. The movie itself is all calculation. It’s achingly, parodically middlebrow in everything from its storyline (the 25th anniversary tour of a string quartet is jeopardised by the illness of its founder, and the tensions between the remaining three members) to the bias of the script, which fondly imagines that passionate young women go helplessly cock-a-hoop for embittered, middle-aged jobbing musicians with an entire airport carousel’s worth of emotional baggage.

but Geras doesn’t even like

… Christopher Walken's performance, which [Gilbey] calls outstanding. Don't believe it. Walken fits right in, with his oh-so-delicate and suffering sensitivity conveyed by a sad eye and a near-sneer.

So let me comment on these criticisms and reveal some of my own views in the process, without, I hope, exposing too much of the plot in the process. For a start, I think any comparison with Amour is ill-founded – the latter is about a long-married couple facing the harsh vicissitudes of old age. Three of the Fugue Quartet are in their professional prime and their problems are both more complicated and less tragic than that of Georges and Anne. I thought Walken was good in his part, but all the main players were convincing - Walken can hardly be blamed for offering a slightly unsettling intimation of Ben Bradshaw MP in years to come. If the New Statesman regards this film as “middlebrow”, I have to wonder where they find something highbrow at the cinema these days. Would they have had any time for Zilberman’s only previous film direction (according to IMDb), a documentary, Watermarks, about the Hakoah Jewish women’s swimming team in pre-War Vienna? Possibly not sufficiently recherché for the Staggers.

Gilbey’s reference to “embittered, middle-aged jobbing musicians” eludes me. The Fugue Quartet – and whether this is realistic I have no idea – are clearly being portrayed as performers of high international standing with incomes and standards of living to match. The quartet’s first violin player, who is the bachelor object of said young woman’s passion, not only owns a BMW but what looked to me like a Gerhard Richter candle painting. Another player was contemplating paying over US $20,000 for a violin. As for young women and middle-aged men, I can well remember from my university days a woman student being involved with a rather older academic – and that was in Britain in the 1960s, not New York now. By the way, if any player in the quartet was embittered, it was the second violin, not the first.

Anyone who has had to earn their living in a team, however prosaic its purpose, will recognise the film’s portrayal of the conflicts that can arise between professional and personal interests. So as far as cinema dramas go, and so far as I can understand the lives of high-flying classical musicians in Manhattan, it seemed plausible enough, and as for the unavoidable preciousness given the subject – well not every film can be about the CIA. Zilberman wrote, part-screenplayed and directed A Late Quartet. I’m hoping he will direct again before long, in the meantime Watermarks is available only on a Region 1 DVD unfortunately.


UPDATE 29 JANUARY 2014

Anyone who has read this far might find this report on BBC News, Hidden hierarchy in string quartets revealed, interesting!

Unemployment among the South West’s young

To judge from his tweets Ben Bradshaw MP (@BenPBradshaw) is firmly engaged with his Exeter constituency. On 19 July he tweeted:

JSA is Job Seekers Allowance, paid to those who are eligible and between 18 and pension age.

Taking the tweet literally, in Exeter in June 2012 for every 100 18 to 24 year olds who had been in receipt of JSA for more than a year, a year earlier there would have been been only 20. Looking for the actual numbers, I turned to the relevant House of Commons Library Research Paper (Unemployment by Constituency, July 2012, RP12/41 dated 18 July 2012), in particular:

Table 1B which shows that in June 2012 the total number of JSA claimants in Exeter was 2039, up by 23 from a year earlier. Of these, 475 had been claiming for more than 12 months, up by 290.

Table 2 which breaks the 2039 down into 645 aged 24 and under, 1055 aged 25 to 49 and 330 aged 50 and over (9 have been ‘lost’ presumably because of rounding to the nearest 5).

The Venn diagram below brings these numbers together, but the size of the overlapping area which corresponds to those on JSA for more than a year AND aged 18 to 24 is undefined (x):

However, the Economy & Tourism Unit of Exeter City Council produced an Economic Trends Report in November 2011 which provides this data for October 2010 and October 2011 as being 25 and 30 respectively (page 5). Interpolating for June 2011 gives an estimate of 28. Again turning to the HoC Library Research Paper a year ago (Unemployment by Constituency, July 2011, RP11/58 dated 13 July 2011), it is possible to produce a similar Venn diagram for June 2011. And also x can be estimated as about 140 ie’fivefold’.

The implications are pretty startling. The total number of unemployed in Exeter has changed little in a year and the proportion aged 18 to 24 has remained 32%. But the proportion of the 18 to 24s on JSA for more than a year has gone from 4% to 22% in the 12 months since June 11. In the same period for the over-24s the movement was from 11% to 24%. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Regional Labour Market Statistics, July 2012 show that this trend is apparent among the 18 to 24s across the whole South West region:

As can be seen, the fivefold increase in Exeter is below that of the SW region which is showing a more than sevenfold increase (725%). The SW region had nearly twice the national (UK) movement in the ONS data for the same period, which is up 405%.

Reporting Exeter youth joblessness

A few posts back, I remarked that there are only two Labour-held parliamentary seats in England west of Bristol. One of these is Exeter where the MP is Ben Bradshaw, who was Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport in the Labour government up to 2010. Like many MPs he makes use of Twitter (@BenPBradshaw), and on 15 March he tweeted this:

Dreadful #Exeter and SW long term youth (18-24) joblessness rates up massive 230.8% & 183.6% respectively Feb 2011 - Feb 2012 #toryfail

I was a bit alarmed by the figures he quoted, not because of underestimating the seriousness of youth unemployment across the UK, but for numeracy reasons. I am wary of percentages, which are after all only a form of fraction, when they are greater than 100 (although I’m 110% committed to this blog of course), especially when they come with a decimal place and so have four significant figures.

The formula for expressing a year on year increase as a percentage is pretty simple. If a year ago there were M of something and now there are N, the calculation is:

Percentage increase = (N – M) * 100 / M

So, if 1000 youths were jobless in Exeter in Feb 2011 and 3308 were jobless in Feb 2012:

(3308 - 1000) * 100 / 1000 = 230.8%

but Exeter isn’t in Greece, and more than three times the number of jobless than there were a year ago seems a bit surprising. Helpfully, every month the House of Commons Library produces a Research Paper which “contains labour market figures for parliamentary constituencies, as well as a summary of the latest national and regional statistics” and the March 2012 issue (RP 12/12) contains the data for February 2012. Table 2 on page 39 shows that in Exeter the number of Job Seekers Allowance claimants who are 24 and under in February 2012 was 725, an annual % change of 13.3. The equivalent number of claimants in the March 2011 issue (RP 11/26), at Table 2 on page 35, was 640. Using the calculation above:

(725 – 640) * 100 / 640 = 13.3%

as in RP 12/12.

There are no detailed regional statistics in the Research Papers but RP 12/12 has some relevant graphics. On page 6 there is a chart (below) which shows that the South West has the lowest unemployment level of the English regions.

There are also maps showing the unemployment rate in the South West:

and the change in the claimant count:

While some nearby constituencies are worse (top quintile), Exeter is not well-placed in the fourth quintile, but on both these measures the situation is far poorer in the North East (below).

It may be that Ben Bradshaw has made use of some other data which do substantiate the figures in his tweet. If so, the discrepancy with the situation which the House of Commons Library Research Paper seems to be indicating ought to be addressed.

ADDENDUM 18 APRIL