I Don't Understand.

What don't I understand, you ask? Well, Shoshanna, Meredith and I went to see Evening on Tuesday night. It was dreadful. Plain. and. Simple. Don't waste your money. And to tell you the truth it hurts me a little to say that. There are not enough movies written for strong women actresses. Movies are dominated by men and men's stories. Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy things exploding and characters from comic strips, but I know first hand that there are more women in the acting business than men and way less opportunity. That's why I don't understand how so many fabulous women signed up to do this bad movie. In case you don't know this is the cast list: Claire Danes, Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Toni Collette, Natascha Richardson, Eileen Atkins, Mamie Gummer, and Meryl Streep. I know you are as shocked as I am that all these people are in a bad movie together.
First, the script is just dreadful. The main character is Ann, played in old age by Vanessa Redgrave, and as a young woman by Claire Danes. First of all, the old Ann is dying, but of what we are never to actually find out- most likely just old age. It kind of tries to be Alzheimer's or dementia, but twice she kind of makes noises as if she's in pain. The worst part is that she is confined to her bed throughout the movie almost completely. The best actress in the world wouldn't be able to hold a movie together when all the action takes place in bed unless it's a porn. It was tragic. On top of that the most common way for the action to slip from the present to the past was old Ann falling asleep most of the time mid-sentence. Which brings me to my second point. The movement between past and present was pointless. It made the movie seem even more scattered and did nothing to further the plot, add suspense or further develop character (all great reasons to include this device: see The Notebook or Da Vinci Code to understand how it's done well). And finally, the characters' relationships, which is what the movie is attempting to be about, are all poorly developed. Ann's daughters seem to be trying to figure out their own lives in relation to their mother's, but they seem to know nothing about her. They both argue (stupidly) that one has everything and isn't really happy (Richardson) and one has nothing and isn't really happy (Collette). And all mom wants to tell them is that there are no mistakes in life and to be happy, even though in her dying she is fixated on the one mistake she made- not getting the man she loved. Add into all this the nurse morphing back and forth from a nurse to a woman dressed in a white dress with a sparkling shawl that Ann seems fixated on, and the appearance of glowing butterflies which pointlessly get Ann out of bed to climb down the stairs and then run into the bushes. This was one time that she didn't fall asleep to allow the director to change from past to present and it was the only time that she got out of bed.
Save it for Netflix if you must, but otherwise go see A Mighty Heart or Sicko. I wish I had.