Julianne Moore won a well-deserved Academy Award for her performance in 2014’s Still Alice, as a linguistics professor doing her best to cope with a slide into Alzheimer’s.
Jessica Lange deserves the same reward, for her richly nuanced work in this film.
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| Edith (Kathy Bataes, left) loses her patience — but not her compassion — when longtime best friend Lillian (Jessica Lange) refuses to believe that anything is truly wrong with her. |
...to the almost total exclusion of her adult daughter, to that poor woman’s dismay. But that’s getting ahead of things.
Scripter Elisabeth Seldes Annacone was inspired by her aunt, Tony Award-winning stage and film actress Marian Hall Seldes, whose busy career included every one of the 1,809 performances of Ira Levin’s play Deathtrap, which earned her mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. She worked tirelessly until 2011, at which point — sadly — she spiraled into dementia during the final three years of her life.
Annacone’s sensitive script is handled with assurance by director Michael Cristofer, best known for theater works that include his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Shadow Box. His approach here feels very much like a stage play, which focuses on the crucial few days when veteran stage actress Lillian Hall (Lange) — proud of the fact that she’s never missed a performance during her long and celebrated career — realizes that she no longer can conceal her worsening condition from the world.
Or from herself.
Annacone and Cristofer split their narrative into three parallel elements: rehearsals of Lillia ‘s next starring role, in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard; intimate glimpses of her personal life, whether alone at home or in the company of family and colleagues; and B&W “interview footage” of various individuals filmed for the electronic press kit that’ll accompany the play’s opening.
On stage, it becomes increasing clear that Lillian has trouble remembering her lines, to the dismay of play director David Flemming (Jesse Williams). He has long admired her, and has been making allowances ... and excuses to the other cast members.
Producer Jane Stone (Cindy Hogan) is more pragmatic; she’s horrified by the possibility that the star who attracted this production’s financial backers, may prove incapable of making it to opening night.
Off-stage, Lillian’s condition has become obvious to best friend and long-time personal assistant Edith Wilson (Kathy Bates). She knows the signs, having watched her late husband suffer the same fate. “I won’t do this again!” she rages, confronted by Lillian’s initial refusal to accept reality.
But Edith is too strong an ally to actually toss in the towel.
Bates is equally strong. Her worried gaze and thin-lipped silence speak volumes, and it’s clear — from Lange’s guilty, haunted expression — that Lillian gets the message. She simply doesn’t like it, can’t believe it, won’t accept it.
This obviously isn’t a happy story, and it’s heartbreaking — thanks to the delicate shading of Lange’s performance — to watch this woman slowly lose the most important thing that has carried her through such a long career: self-assurance.
Unfortunately, her singularity of purpose has come at a steep cost. Margaret (Lily Rabe), Lillian’s only child, grew up knowing that she’d always run second to her mother’s love of the stage. They talk, but they don’t communicate, because Lillian often doesn’t listen.
Early in this film, Margaret shows up for a planned breakfast date, only to discover that her mother appears to have overlooked it. We can tell, from Rabe’s expression, that Margaret assumes this is simply her mother being self-centered as usual: merely another in a long line of attempted get-togethers that Lillian has blown off.
But we also can tell, from Edith’s expression, that she knows Lillian genuinely forgot ... and that Margaret hasn’t a clue about her mother’s condition.
That revelation, when it eventually arrives, is another of this film’s many strong scenes; Rabe handles it so persuasively that we grieve for her.
Lillian’s prior visit with a specialist, Dr. DeMayo (a note-perfect Keith Arthur Bolden), is quietly intense. She initially swans through the consultation; he tolerates this with amused patience, having seen it all before. Then he hits her with a “little memory test,” the outcome of which forces Lillian to drop her breezy theatricality.
Lange’s chagrined expression and bearing, initially that of a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, morphs into a steely gaze and the wrong sort of acceptance: a belief that she can beat it.
By the time this film concludes, Lange will have persuasively taken Lillian through all five stages of grief.
Lighter, gentler moments take place late at night, during wistful chats across the short wall that separates the large apartment balcony she shares with neighbor Ty Maynard (Pierce Brosnan, serenely suave). The shared intimacy is palpable; in another life, they might have been lovers.
Lillian also is haunted by visions of her late and much-adored husband, Carson (Michael Rose), whose enigmatic smile seems ... beckoning?
Distressing as it is, to watch Lillian get progressively more confused during play rehearsals, Cristofer and Annacone find a clever way to conclude this saga on a triumphant note: a means to allow Lillian to retain her dignity and stature.
Even if we know — as does Lillian — that this is, at best, a temporary reprieve ... that’s enough.
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