Quartet

2012 Quartet, NOT Merchant Ivory!
Here is a cast to die for, playing characters in a home for retired opera singers; they are preparing for their annual celebration of Verdi's birthday. But there is a "spanner (wrench) in the works" when a former diva arrives, in the person of Maggie Smith. Based on the play by Ronald Harwood and directed by first-timer Dustin Hoffman, this delicious PG-13 comedy bathes us in classical music, witty dialogue and a lovely setting. In fact the opening credits include some of the finest editing I've had the pleasure to enjoy in recent years. Kudos to Barney Pilling for the film editing; Ben Smith for the art direction; and Dustin Hoffman for respecting the music.

The world of opera is a relatively small one, so it is no surprise that a few of these divas and divos have a shared "history," and therein lies our tale.

Let's look at some of this wonderful cast:
* Maggie Smith ("Downton Abbey") is Jean, who always had at least 12 curtain calls but hasn't been in...

Never-Neverland Revisited
Beecham House, the setting of this film, is an English country estate, a posh historical mansion surrounded by acres of park and garden. It's autumn, the leaves are gorgeous, Golden Pond was never so scenic, and the inhabitants -- a couple dozen octogenarian "retired professional musicians living on charity -- are effectively in Paradise. They're a handsome crowd too, these oldsters with much of their talent and all of their ego intact. Not an oxygen tank or a movable chemo-drip in sight! Alzheimer's, senility, dementia? Acknowledged but quaintly innocuous. Crotchets and squabbles? No worse than among younger folk. A doctor in residence and a staff of sympathetic nurses? Hey, nothing but the ritz for beloved stars of yestershow! A real place? Don't we wish, we soon-to-be-aged musicians! It's fantasyland, but I'm NOT complaining. The film is too visually luscious not to be appreciated, and the acting is too artful not to be admired.

Bill Connolly has the "Peter Pan" role as...

Will you love it? Or hate it? There doesn't seem to be an in-between.
I'm not sure if you have to be over the hill (as I am), to love this movie (as I did) about a home for retired musicians, but it certainly appears that way to me after coming home and reading A. O. Scott's middling New York Times review and its online reader responses, which seem to be either total disdain or absolute delight and nothing in between.

It probably helps to have a lifelong love of classical music, especially opera, with just a smidgen of Gilbert & Sullivan & vaudeville mixed in.

While, as expected, Maggie Smith, Pauline Collins, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Michael Gambon are superb in the leading roles, the supporting player-musicians, who also inhabit the beautiful, scenic Beecham House, some of whom are familiar faces but most of whom I'd never heard of, are a joy to behold as well. Please be sure to stay for the closing credits where you'll see headshots of each of them as they are now and as they were in a key role from their...

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