Stage Play Turned Film Is Stirringly Sublime
DIRECTOR: ISRAEL HOROVITZ/2014
My Old Lady is a stirring stage play for the silver screen—quite literally, in fact. Prolific and award-winning playwright (and occasional screenwriter) Israel Horovitz[1] has adapted his 2002 3-person show into his first feature film as a director[2], at the ripe old age of 75. In writing (and now in directing) My Old Lady, Horovitz drew upon his considerable life experience—from his abusive childhood, to a string of failed romances, to the deaths of a child, and later a spouse, to his days in France and his friendships with Alma Singer and Samuel Beckett. My Old Lady feels like the sum total of a life’s experiences channeled through pen onto paper and then through camera onto screen, writ large by a master of the human voice and brought to life through some of the best performances of the year.
The posters for My Old Lady tout the multiple Oscar nominations and wins of its cast, and with good reason. Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Dame Maggie Smith are all sublime in this film, with Kline and Thomas especially delivering performances that shake the screen to its core. One of the ingredients of movie magic is the rare occasion when a near-perfect blend of talent coalesces from both behind and in front of the camera (it’s why auteur directors so often have favourite actors whom they work with again and again). In the case of My Old Lady, the cast and the filmmaker are a match made in cinematic heaven, as if twelve years ago Horovitz saw into the future and wrote these words specifically for these actors. Each character is a piece of his soul laid bare upon the frame; and yet they transcend Horovitz’s voice and become complete persons of their own, brought to life by these three amazing actors as if their careers were leading up to this moment.
I’m being a little hyperbolic here, but I’m just trying to say that this movie is really good. It’s filled with amazing dialogue and monologue, and the actors are an absolute joy to watch deliver those words.
As a movie buff and a film critic, Hollywood is my textbook, and therefore I have little experience in the playhouse. I am of two minds after seeing this film. On the one hand, I now wish I could go back and see each and every one of Mr. Horovitz’s plays.
I’m being a little hyperbolic here, but I’m just trying to say that this movie is really good. It’s filled with amazing dialogue and monologue, and the actors are an absolute joy to watch deliver those words.
On the other hand, as a lover of film, I almost feel cheated that he is only now getting around to making feature films (assuming he intends to make more). I certainly am now renewed with a desire to go back and discover the films he has written (I have only seen Sunshine, but it is still one of my favourite Danny Boyle films). My Old Lady is so compelling and tangible and stirring that I cannot help but imagine what a wealth of hidden treasure a career’s worth of motion pictures from Horovitz would be like—perhaps in another life, where he picked up a camera instead of a pen or a typewriter. In the meantime, I’m grateful for the scripts we have gotten out of him, and I hope that he lives to be as old as a titular “Old Lady” of the film, and continues to bless us with his considerable gifts for decades to come.
[1] Notable screenplays include Author! Author! (1982) and Sunshine (1999).
[2] In 2002 he directed the short film 3 Weeks After Paradise