A Late Quartet was a noble effort, but somewhat disappointing because I’ve seen too many amazing French movies that meditate on issues of loss without melodramatic plot points. For an American movie, it does a fairly good job, but it has two impulses-art house, independent film and soap opera tendencies. To transcend the cheesiness, the acting quality is key. Christopher Walken is the epitome of understated struggle to resign himself to the inevitable without giving in to despair or escape from the indignities to come. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a magnificent performance as always. No one else other than Hoffman can do wrong and seem so understandable, sympathetic and human. Catherine Keener is a great actress and is supposed to be playing a woman paralyzed and resistant to change, but she seems more muted and washed out than frozen. I can’t tell if Mark Ivanir did a great performance, and his story was weak or vice versa. I realize that the point of the movie was to illustrate the dissonance within the group when one person leaves. The viewer is supposed to contrast the ongoing events of the movie and the quartet’s documentary portrait-a moment in time, but I would have preferred a slower transition showing their cohesion before the crisis.