Ah Netflix.... the poor man's cable. I love how you can just pull open a flick directly over your computer. Just finished watching a movie about an aged writer trying to write what will be his last novel, and living at the tail end of a literary era fast fading. He meets a young woman working on her college thesis who lures him back to some form of life, while using him and his connections to her own ends. The surprise for me was finding the ever interesting Lili Taylor playing the writer's daughter, and struggling with the desire for children. The film, Starting Out in the Evening, examines what it means when everyone pursues their own freedom; invariably when there is no compromise, pain and loneliness intrude.
In other words, true freewill is a beast wrapped up in a blessing. Frank Langella does a good job as he is slowly lifted by film's end out of his coffin of inaction. The characters that he struggles to create for his last novel follow his lead, failing to exist or do anything at all. By the end of the film Leonard Schiller, our author, has gained some insight and knows he must take action while the clock of his life still ticks. The delight for me, though, is Taylor. There is always a realness about her, whether in Mystic Pizza or Household Saints or here as Langella's daughter.
This cheap film shot quickly and in Manhattan shows that one need not spend millions to tell a story. On the other hand those folks used to rapid action and spectacle should surely avoid this. The dark, the talk, the silence will surely cause sleep among those inclined to sleep deeply through things.
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