As a writer, I love movies about writers. That is, I love them up to the point that I start thinking about my own personal writing endeavours and I realize how monstrously behind I am and that I have a pile of reviews and other articles sky high that I have to get through before I can even think about attacking my pile of creative writing. But I love them in the end; they’re pure because there’s nothing more straightforward in the creative process than sitting behind a blank piece of paper and filling it with prose. Plus, I have a better chance of becoming a famous writer than I do a superhero, a space fighter or even a serial killer tracking police detective.
I ran into an interesting comparison before seeing Starting Out in the Evening, as printed in the Off the Shelf publication for Guelph’s Bookshelf cinema. It says, “Starting Out in the Evening and No Country for Old Men both acknowledge a passing of time and irreversible changes occurring in American society. Both films started out as novels. The latter points a bloodied finger at Anton Chigurh, who personifies a new low of lawlessness and violence. The former, written by Brian Morton, points our attention towards Leonard Schiller, a retired professor and one-time novelist, now in his 70s, whose decorum defines a previous era when decency was the norm.”
Leonard Schiller (as played by Frank Langella) has written four books in his life, and he’s been stuck on writing the fifth. Schiller is a man whose writing is deliberate; he doesn’t crank off books in a mechanized fashion but seemingly conceives them, gives birth to them, nurtures them and allows them to grow before sharing them. In the commoditised arts of the present era, which yes even extends to books, Schiller is a dinosaur. He’s out-paced and out-numbered by younger writers that fire off books about scandal or otherwise have franchise opportunity. What is a man like Leonard Schiller to do in a day and age such as this? Naturally, the only thing he can do: keep writing.
The title refers to the notion that “It’s never too late…” This theme encompasses not just Schiller, who is some what reinvigorated when a young grad student (Lauren Ambrose) wants to build her thesis around him, but his daughter Ariel (played by Lili Taylor) as well. Ariel is a dance instructor whose biological drive is propelling her to sleep with her boyfriend without using birth control so she can get pregnant and not tell him. Part of the problem with this plan is that Ariel still has feelings for her ex, Casey (Adrian Lester), who’d always put his needs before hers. It’s an ironic parallel to her relationship with her father, who had been one to put writing ahead of family until the untimely death of his wife.
Starting Out is a movie of small moves and if you’re sitting there waiting for the big revelation or something equally earth-shattering to occur you’re going to be left behind as everyone else in the audience is engrossed by a tale of people who are simply living. It’s a movie that’s subtle and deliberate and filled with as much class and calm as its central character. As to where the story is going, you never know; it unfurls at its own time and at it’s own pace, leaving you to gently follow on its wake with a steady focus on just this small group of characters.
At the centre is a great performance of restraint by Langella, a man so dignified and practiced you shudder to think of him any other way but as the pillar of strength that he appears. Ambrose, as Heather the grad student, tries her best to knock him out of his orbit, but you kind of hope that she doesn’t succeed because Schiller is such a paragon of a bygone time, a reminder of what people aspired to be with their art: timeless and unyielding to commercial concerns. Ariel’s story, as brought to life by Taylor is, surprisingly, as compelling as that of the elder Schiller and Taylor and Langella have some great scenes together. Finally, Lester, from the BBC’s heist caper series Hustle, creates remarkable sympathy as Casey where lesser talent would have made less a man of the character.
Starting Out in the Evening is a great movie for the artist and the arts appreciator; for writers and those that aspire to write better. It’s a beautiful movie with four great performances at its heart. It’s well worth seeking out and seeing if it should come to a theatre near you.
