_Starting Out in the Evening_; _The Decline of the American Empire_

[septimus_...@q.com]

The old male professor/young female student relationship in
_Like Someone in Love_ leads me to a couple of films about
university academics and intellectuals (although quotes
may be needed around those words).

_Starting in the Evening_ is half of a good film. It is
well acted, although the directing is a bit amateurish and
the writing (adapted from a novel I haven't read) is
problematic. It keeps cutting between the stories of the
writer/retired professor Leonard Schiller (Anthony Langella)
and his single daughter (played by Lili Taylor). Their
comfortable relationship in New York City is interrupted
by a graduate student Heather (Lauren Ambrose) trying to
write her thesis on the aging writer, and by the return of
the daughter's ex-lover (English actor Adrian Lester).
There is an attempt to draw parallels between the boyfriend
and the writer, both supposed to be workaholics who put
their lover a distant second. But since the Lester
character's back story is not fleshed out (I don't think
we've been told what he does for a living -- and I've seen
the film 4 times), it makes for an awkward, unbalanced
contrast.

The film should have focused on the ex-professor/graduate
student relationship instead. Lauren Ambrose's Heather
is an amazing character, and is the reason I keep returning
to this problematic film. She is smart, seductive,
provocative, ambitious; above all, she knows about these
strengths of hers and is not above using them to advance
her career. She is also genuinely, passionately in love
with Leonard Schiller's first two novels; in the film's
most passionate monolog, she relates how the books have
changed her life and made her follow her career dreams
rather than follow her boyfriend out of town. She has
trouble with his later novels, and her several thrust-and-
parry exchanges with Schiller -- she accusing him of
losing his courage while he counters that she is insulting
his work of being veiled autobiography -- are the high
points of the film. She clearly takes a simplistic,
highly personal, and one-sided view of his ourve, ignoring
his artistic growth. Over time, he grudgingly admits that
she is not all wrong, that the characters in his later
novels (especially the one he has worked on for 10 years)
lacks heart, that they don't do anything interesting.

All this could have been dramatized better if the filmmaker
simply let someone reads his prose in his early and late
novels, which will give a much better contrast his
evolution as a writer. (I was hooked on the American
writer James Salter after a Harper's magazine reviewer
excerpted a few passages of his. That's the way to show
the essence of the writer.) Another huge problem is that
the filmmaker sides with Schiller and graduatlly lsquanders
the fine balance between the old and young adversaries.
In the commentary, the director even mentioned that he
tried to change Heather's pivotal monolog, no doubt
in a way to make her less relatable to the audience.
As it is, most of the commenteries in IMDB are virulent
against Heather already -- never mind that the two leads
should be almost equals; they rshake each other up and
make the other reassess his/her life. Instead, the film
sets up Heather as the usurping villain who disrupts the
Great Writer's Last Work (since he has been forgotten as
a writer, it is unclear his new novel would be read by
anyone even if he finds a publishere). At the end, when
Heather visits Schiller recovering from a stroke, he gives
her a slab in the face -- and the director's commentary
heartily applauded the gesture, praising the old man's
"gravitas"! Really? Beating up a woman gives you
gravitas? He was just a bitter, defeated old man looking
for someone to blame. _Three Colors: Red_ this isn't.
But for all this complaint, Lauren Ambrose really gives a
memorable performance. I look forward to other flims of hers.

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_The Decline of the American Empire_ is my least favorite
film by Denys Arcand. I don't think I even finished
watching it the first time. Trying it again gives a much
needed corrective. Its unflattering depiction of university
professors and their spouses -- all of whom are serial
philanderers who only care about sleeping with students,
country club tennis instructors, prostitutes, and each
others' wives. It is a breath of fresh air compared to
_Like Someone in Love_ or _Starting Out in the Evening_'s
hagliographic veneration of old men who used to teach
at universities and carry themselves as "intellectuals."
(I am stunned that Americans, at least those who post
in IMDB, identify so much with these authority figures.)
These professors in Arcand's film are by no means accurate
portraits of the real thing -- they are more like frat
boys and girls, and are too open, have too little ego.
But at least the film doesn't treat them as saints or
tortured dark knights facing down a younger generation
of barbarians.