Saturday, March 4, 2023

A Delicate Balance (1973)

IMDb plot summary: A well-to-do Connecticut family is upended when the grown daughter's godparents, seized by a nameless terror, decide to come live with them.
Directed by Tony Richardson. Starring Katharine Hepburn, Paul Scofield, and Lee Remick.

A Delicate Balance is a filmed version of an Edward Albee play centering on a wealthy couple who find themselves housing an alcoholic sister, a four-times-divorced daughter, and two old friends who suddenly find themselves scared of their own homes. The six characters mull around waxing philosophical about society and relationships and so on and it's very Albee and very stagey. For a lot of people that would automatically equal "bad," but I do find the cast compelling enough and the dialogue beautifully lyrical enough that I really enjoyed the moment-by-moment scenes, even if it mostly passes me by on the big picture. Katharine Hepburn in particular is really striking here. She just has such a captivating way of delivering her lines that makes the pretentiousness of them part of the appeal as a whole. Albee's dialogue is a bit like hearing a sequence of prettily-crafted mini poems that connect to each other if you try real hard, but the poems themselves are interesting enough in isolation. Not one I'm going to hold onto for very long, but I'm glad I saw it.

How it entered my Flickchart:
A Delicate Balance < Kinky Boots the Musical
A Delicate Balance > Days of Heaven
A Delicate Balance > The Apostle
A Delicate Balance > Belfast
A Delicate Balance > Internal Affairs
A Delicate Balance < Escape from New York
A Delicate Balance > The Wailing
A Delicate Balance > The Adventures of Huck Finn
A Delicate Balance < The Beach
A Delicate Balance > High School Musical 3: Senior Year
A Delicate Balance < Fatherhood
A Delicate Balance < My Girl
Final spot: #1960 out of 3773, or 48%.

No comments: