3.5 stars. Rated R, for blunt profanity
By Derrick Bang
Once the characters are
introduced, and the core premise established, most folks will be able to
anticipate all the plot beats coming in Stuart Ross Fink’s script.
Doesn’t matter. The execution is
charming, from start to finish.
 |
| Small-town newspaper reporter Anne Sherman (Amanda Seyfried, left) is astonished when take-charge Harriet Lauler (Shirley MacLaine) barges into the publisher's office and insists on commissioning — and fine-tuning — the obituary that'll run after her death. |
Actors lucky enough to achieve
milestone birthdays often are rewarded with the opportunity to play eccentric
and/or cantankerous oldsters who leave a trail of shell-shocked victims in
their wake: a stereotype that rarely fails to entertain. Indeed, such character
portraits often result in nominations and awards. (Just for starters: Maggie
Smith, The Lady in the Van; Rolf
Lassgård, A Man Called Ove; Jack
Lemmon and Walter Matthau, Grumpy Old Men;
Art Carney, Harry and Tonto.)
Which brings us to tart-tongued,
obsessive/compulsive Harriet Lauler: a once successful advertising executive
whose world has contracted to the confines of her spacious, beautifully
appointed — but empty — house, and who now marks the passage of each grindingly
slow day with boredom and frustration. And who is played, with waspish delight,
by Shirley MacLaine.
The Last Word — terrific title, by the way —
finds Harriet adrift in a lonesome existence of her own making: completely
isolated from the family members, former friends and colleagues that she has
annoyed, offended, insulted or merely exasperated. Whether this seclusion is
deserved, is beside the point; our heartbreaking introduction to Harriet finds
her at low ebb, MacLaine wordlessly conveying the woman’s hushed despair during
a somber montage accompanied solely by soft notes from Nathan Matthew David’s
score.
This is by no means the first
film to preface its narrative by mining gentle chuckles from a character’s
ill-conceived suicide attempt. Goldie Hawn won an Oscar for doing so, back in
1969’s Cactus Flower; poor Lassgård’s
similar efforts kept getting frustrated, in the aforementioned A Man Called Ove. The worst part for
Harriet, after hospital treatment, is that she’s embarrassed to have revealed a
weakness in her unswerving refinement.
But the act also prompts an
epiphany, when she happens to glance at a random obituary in the local
newspaper. Suddenly concerned about how she’ll be remembered in a few similarly
short paragraphs, after her passing, Harriet impulsively decides to control the situation. She therefore
hires the young journalist in question — Anne Sherman (Amanda Seyfried) — to
write her obituary. Now, while she’s
still alive.
