In cinematic relationships of this sort, 99 times out of a 100 it will be a young woman and a considerably older man. Usually a gentleman. Often a professional. Generally going through one or another crisis “in the autumn of his years”. A crisis that will either be assuaged or exaserbated by this generation gap.
Here the crisis revolves around a struggling writer. A former professor who, with his health declining, is intent on finishing one last novel. Heather idolizes him. But what can this considerably younger woman possibly know about him?
Heather, however, is also a writer. She was recently published in prestigious literary magazine. A piece entitled, “Chaos Theory: The Bold Imagination of Stanley Elkin”
So, they are both passionately committed to the world of literature. They share that enduring commitment to the mind that others either get or they don’t. Only, increasingly, we live in a world where that is respected less and less and less.
And where it then all becomes particularly tricky is when the part about the mind seeps into the part about emotions. And then the part about sex.
But: there are two relationships explored here. The second revolves around the older gentlman’s daughter. She is involved in a ralationship with a man more or less her own age. But there’s a problem of a different sort here: She wants a child and he does not.
Ariel, however, is less the “thinker” type than the “doer”. Only what she does doesn’t really amount to much at all. At least not in the eyes of her father. And this film is basically an exploration into how the man [or the woman] and the mind are to be thought of apart and together.
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starting_ … he_Evening
trailer: youtu.be/1NmF2Dx46RY
STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING [2007]
Directed by Andrew Wagner
[b]Ariel: Are you a burglar?
Heather: Not professionally.
Ariel: Well, it’s good to have a hobby.
…
Charles: How are you, are you still writing?
Leonard: Yes. Yes, of course. As a matter of fact, I’m just putting the finishing touches on my new novel. I’d really be happy to send it over to you as soon as it is finished.
Charles: Leonard, I respect you too much to blow smoke. This business has turned into the film industry. It’s all about the name. Literary novels are such a tough sell. It would be hard to get anyone on board. To tell you the truth most of the business we do is celebrity confessions and self-help books. [/b]
Time, perhaps, to rethink Heather’s invitation.
[b]Heather: You give your charaters freedom.
Leonard: It’s not mine to give. What I give them is the freedom to find their own way…I always start with a character. In Tenderness I had a picture of a woman being asked to leave a museum because she had run her hand over one of the statues. I had no idea who she was or why she was touching the statue. I wrote the book to find out.
…
Leonard: The book is taking so long because following one’s characters around takes stamina. I’m old. I’m having trouble keeping up.
Heather: I notice you’ve made several references to being old. I can’t help but wonder if you are using your age to mask a deeper conflict?
Leonard [somewhat offened by this]: Miss Wolfe. I agreed to assist you in your enterprise because you strike me as a serious young woman. However, this is our first interview and there is such a thing as decorum.
Heather: Point taken. However, Professor, should you encounter any shortcomings in my thesis I hope you wouldn’t allow me to use my youth as a defense.
Leonard [thinking about it]: Okay, then. Point taken.
…
Ariel: Dad, maybe the characters in your books have the luxury of grappling with moral issues, but I’m in the real world.
…
Leonard [to Heather]: Freedom isn’t the choice the world encourages. You have to wear a suit of armor to defend it.
…
Ariel: Victor, it’s not you, it’s me.
Victor: Oh, I hate it when people say that because they’re usually lying.
…
Ariel: Victor, I didn’t put in my diaphragm.
Victor: Well, put it in now.
Ariel: I didn’t bring it with me. I haven’t brought for weeks.
Victor: You’ve been trying to have my child, but now that I want to marry you, you don’t want to have a child with me?
Ariel: See Victor, it’s not you. It really is me.
…
Leonard: I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that art and commerce are at war.
Heather: I think that’s inspiring to be so pure about your art.
Sandra [who works at Vanity Fair]: I don’t see what’s so pure abour turning down paid work. As if making a living means you are guilty of selling your soul.
Leonard: I make my living writing and, until recently, teaching literature. That’s my world and I’m faithful to it. Of course your magazine owes its existence to advertising revenue. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that but it’s a compromise I am not willing to make.
Sandra: But that advertising revenue allows us to introduce new writing talent to the world. I don’t see the compromise in that. [/b]
So, who won?
[b]Heather [to Leonard]: Lie down. We don’t have to do anything. I just want to be next to you.
…
Heather: Do you think that people will still be reading you in a hundred years.
Leonard: What I wonder is if people will still be reading at all in a hundred years.
Heather: Really, don’t you ever think about it?
Leonard: If I do it would be unseemly to talk about it. It’s got nothing to do with what the whole enterprise is about.
Heather: What is the whole enterprise about?
Leonard: It’s not something I can put into words.
Heather: To put it bluntky Leonard, your novels are out of print and you’re not sure if anyone will publish the one that you’re working on now. So, why do you keep going?
Leonard: Heather, what can I say. Whatever I say will either be be too much or too little.
Heather: Yes, but when I’m summing up my thesis what should I say that it is that keeps you going?
Leonard: Just say it’s the madness of art.
Heather [after a pause]: The madness of art.
…
Author [reading from her book]: “To sit across the table and talk with someone you love is itself a complex engagement. To go to bed with someone…to carry on your conversation in the realm of the body…a realm of insecurity and vulnerability and fear, as well as pleasure is always fraught with the sad evidence of how difficult it is to understand another person and make yourself understood.”[/b]
This is really what the film is all about I suspect.
[b]Heather: To tell you the truth, Leonard, I find very few men my age interesting. They’re like chewing gum; ten minutes of flavor, and then just bland repetition.
…
Leonard: What’s all this about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s solid gold bar?
Heather: Okay. He says that most great writers have an essential theme that runs through their best work. Like Hemmingway’s courage or Dostoevsky’s spiritual violence…
Leonard: I trust you resisted the impulse to place me in their company.
Heather: Well, I do say that you seem to breathe the same moral air, especially in your first two novels when you adhere closely to your own solid gold bar.
Leonard: Ah, yes, personal liberation in the world of Leonard Schilling.
…
Leonard [to Casey]: One has to be willing to surrender, occasionally, one’s beliefs for the greater good.
…
Heather: Your wife left you for another man.
Leonard: One year before my wife died we went through some troubled times. Yes. What does that tell you about my work?
Heather: That life betrayed you and you went into hiding…and you took your characters with you. So they began guarding their lives. They stopped giving in to temptations.
Leonard: No Miss Wolfe. They learned the cost of living only for themselves. And I became aware of problems far greater than my own. And you insult my writing by trying to define it by a single unhappy event from my past. If I had known you were going to subject my work to such simplistic psychological criticism I never would have wasted my time with you in the first place! You insult me. You insult me by insinusting that I should write the same book over and over again.
…
Leonard: Wasting valuable time. That’s a subject you are well schooled in.
Ariel: What’s that suppose to mean? Are you talking about Casey? Because you don’t know what goes on between Casey and me. You don’t know the first thing about our relationship.
Leonard: I know enough. I was there for his birthday toast to you. Apparently I’m the only one who heard it.
Ariel: I heard it. He said he was lucky to find me again.
Leonard: He said you give him everything and you ask for so little in return. Of course he feels lucky. How can you accept such a condition? A man who says you are secondary to his dreams and you always will be.
Ariel: I don’t know, Dad. How did Mom do it?
…
Ariel: I can’t do it, Casey?
Casey: Can’t do what?
Ariel: I can’t do hot and light.
…
Ariel [seeing her father at the typewriter]: Shouldn’t you be resting? Are you sure you should be working so soon?
Leonard: I’m running out of time, dear. I have to finish.[/b]