UNFINISHED SONG (Paul Andrew Williams 2012)

[Chris Knipp]

Paul Andrew Williams: UNFINISHED SONG (2012)


VANESSA REDGRAVE AND TERRENCE STAMP IN UNFINISHED SONG

The pain of uplift

Uplift can be quite a downer these days it seems, judging by the new film Unfinished Song, starring Vanessa Redgrave, who dies, and Terrence Stamp, as her depressed husband, who grieves for her, and sings the song presumably referred to in the title (though it's more clearly the title, with an "S" added, of a song by Celine Dion, played at film's end). Lively pop songs of earlier decades sung by perky oldsters? Haven't I seen that somewhere already? The air of cinemas is alive with the sound of brave, quirky choruses who win competitions against great odds, as does the little high school band led by Jack Black in Richard Linklater's School of Rock. Now there was a film that was fun, and funny, and musical -- qualities Unfinished Song neither seeks nor attains, nor come to think of it does Linklater's acclaimed current release, Before Midnight. The songs this time include rap, rock, and hip hop, with Salt-n-Pepa’s "Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby" much emphasized as one of the tunes learned under an enthusiastic young coach called Elizabeth (an appealing if genric Gemma Atherton) by a choir of oldsters at the village community center.

Unfinished Song follows in the wake of other polished British tearjerkers about men and women of a certain age, such as Calendar Girls, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet, all of which are more cheerful than this one -- Marigold Hotel the funniest and with the best cast, Quartet interesting for its real retired musicians and singers. Of course Redgrave and Stamp constitute an exceptional cast by themselves. Both have had fabulous careers on both stage and screen, with iconic cinematic roles including Antoinioni's Blowup for Redgrave, Billy Budd and Teorema for Stamp. Like the directors today still doing acclaimed work in their nineties or even hundreds (Alain Resnais and Manoel de Olveira coming first to mind), audiences are aging too, and this is another movie designed to appear to them as a demographic. Am I being too prissy in pointing out that when Rossellini made Il generale della Rovere or Bergman made Wild Strawberries, they were not thinking of demographics?

Redgrave plays Marion, a relentlessly perky and smiling woman with terminal cancer, and Stamp plays Arthur, her perpetually grumpy working class pensioner husband who has two expressions. He is angry and hostile, but every once in a long while he cracks a small but authentic smile. They both acknowledge that they never had anything in common. It is a miracle that they have been happy together -- so much as Arthur can be happy -- for forty years. Marion tells the prune-faced Arthur he has always been her "rock," and he is indeed fiercely protective of her, trying to prevent her from practicing a solo of Cyndi Lauper’s "True Colors" (which she sings badly out of tune) even after her cancer has come back and is terminal and she understandably wants to continue the singing lessons at the center to have something positive to focus on. She can barely stand, but the music sustains her and her spirit so inspires her fellow aging songsters that when she's confined to her bed at home, they come, led by Elizabeth, to render Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" outside her window at the crack of dawn, infuriating Arthur.

He is probably right to be annoyed. But when Marion is gone, and Arthur is bereft, unable to accept support from his previously estranged auto mechanic son James (an interesting Christopher Eccleston) and in danger of becoming a recluse, Arthur accepts overtures from Elizabeth and, implausibly (but then, anything can happen) is drawn into the choir and even, in a teasing on-again-off-again manner, participates in the final competition and does a solo of his own. It's admirable more for warm timbre than a remarkable voice, but it's a bit more in tune than Vanessa's performance, and it's the voice of a man who's come a long way. In cooperating with Elizabeth and joining the group, Arthur of course is carrying on the spirit of his wife, who was so much sustained by compositions like Motorhead’s "Ace of Spades," its age-innapropriateness titillating to the aging target audience of this movie, who would probably rather assemble themselves, if at all, to sing "Greensleeves," but get it that this odd program would catch the attention of competition judges.

It's all very unplifting, yet so strong was Terrence Stamp's projection of Beckettian gloom, that I felt quite sad at the end. Sometimes uplift hurts so much more than just muddling through.

Nonetheless Vanessa Redgrave and Terrence Stamp are formidable, even if both are a bit too regal under their costumes and makeup for this working class marriage they're enacting (the sets do the job). As usual with these English feel-good geriatric films, this one is polished and hits its marks impeccably. I still have to repeat that Marigold Hotel is funnier and has more of an all-star cast, not to mention less sorrow, and Quartet has those cool authentic retired English musicians and singers.

Unfinished Song, originally titled Song for Marion, debuted at Toronto September 2012 and opened in NYC 21st June 2013.