An engrossing, exceedingly literate film, Starting Out in the Evening is an artfully understated portrait of an aged novelist struggling with the flickering flame of creativity’s muse. Anchored by a superb performance from Frank Langella, this is a film that combines the best of intimate stage drama with the best of personal, well-crafted independent filmmaking; the result is something that works on multiple levels, and allows viewers both young and old and everywhere in between a looking-glass glimpse into the other’s psyche.



The story centers around Langella’s Leonard Schiller, a once-famous New York writer now given to small, pedestrian rituals. He’s the standard analogue man in an increasingly digital world; his books long out-of-print, Leonard doesn’t take freelance gigs writing advertising copy because he deems it an objectionable compromise; he instead pecks away at a novel he’s been working on for more than a decade, and enjoys simple get-togethers with his adult daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor, fantastic). Despite having suffered a heart attack the previous year, Leonard still doesn’t have much use for self-reflection, until Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), an ambitious grad student defined by an obscure hunger for self-definition, enters his life. Leonard’s early novels had an electrifying impact on Heather, and she now wants to use her thesis project to spur a rediscovery of his work.

At once shaken and emboldened by their challenging interview sessions, Leonard’s staid, respectful tolerance for Heather slowly melts into consideration. An indefinable and precarious intimacy develops between them, but the stars in Heather’s eyes dim when she slowly comes to the conclusion that Leonard is too closed-off from certain unacknowledged traumas of his past to ever again write a truly great book. This cooling coincides, meanwhile, with an unexpected turn in Ariel’s life when she rekindles a relationship with ex-boyfriend Casey (a wonderful Adrian Lester), a matter that greatly worries Leonard given their differing priorities (she wants kids, Casey avowedly doesn’t) in life.

Adapted by Fred Parnes and director Andrew Wagner from Brian Morton’s novel of the same name, Starting Out in the Evening is characterized by a great and involving sense of character detail; the movie grapples in an intellectually honest fashion with notions of aging, responsibility and reinvention, and how they intersect with creative fire. Through it all, Wagner (the 2005 Sundance entry The Talent Given Us) trades in an unfussy style that keeps the focus firmly on his characters. The one big knock on the movie is that it has such a strong sense of Leonard that Heather is a bit recklessly sketched. While intelligently written — she’s certainly no bubbled-headed ditz — Heather’s occasional lack of recognition at how others perceive her actions seems implausible, and after a while, her pluck becomes a bit irksome.

I also at first felt that the manner in which Heather, and the movie, eventually address the inevitable elephant in the room, the potential of romantic connection, rings a bit false. Then I ruminated on it, listened to Wagner’s audio commentary during a second viewing, and came around. What one actually sees here is something quite rare in movies, and that’s why it feels a bit discombobulating — namely, characters circling one another, then reaching out and pulling back, several times, in small but meaningful ways.

Through it all, Langella shines. He’s well known for his stage portrayals of larger-than-life characters — including Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, among others — but his perfectly modulated performance here is one of managed disappointment, something apparently too subtle for Academy Award voters to recognize. Leonard is an emotionally imploded man, able, in his great intellect, to parse and justify his self-interested behaviors. In his stillness and the consistency of his proper actions (both in movement and diction), Langella captures the character’s regret in evocative fashion before the story even spells out the particulars. It’s a breathtaking thing — the sort of intimate, ultra-specific and lived-in portrayal one typically sees only on the stage. That it’s captured for posterity only makes one have more affection for this little gem of a film.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Starting Out in the Evening is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a pair of Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 audio tracks. Unfortunately, the disc’s roster of supplemental bonus materials is pretty slim, and totally lacking in any insight or reminiscence from Langella, which is a shame. Apart from a TV spot and the theatrical trailer, the only extra is the aforementioned feature-length audio commentary track with Wagner. He’s a really smart guy, and a consistently warm guide throughout, but some of his remarks, especially early on, seem a bit scripted. He also rather rarely dotes on physical production detail, except when talking about a few cinematographic choices or set-ups, and composer Adam Gorgoni’s creation of a musical cue of admiration when Heather first enters Leonard’s apartment, and writing room. A lot of his talk is about “finding the democratic balance of storytelling,” which can come across as too theoretical, and lacking in specifics. Thankfully that’s not the case for the movie’s charged kitchen scene between Leonard and Heather, or its reunion between Ariel and Casey, for which Wagner amiably confesses borrowing a line (“I know your silences…”) from another one of Morton’s books. To purchase Starting Out in the Evening on DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) C+ (Disc)