The cinematic partnership between Wallace Shawn and André Gregory—actors, writers, and renaissance men—spans 34 years and includes two classics: My Dinner with André (1980) and Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Their third collaboration, A Master Builder, was released in cinemas in July and is currently playing at Film Forum in New York through August 5. And where the previous two films were masterpieces of a kind of anti-cinema, merging cinematography and stagecraft to find the sublime in the mundane, their latest film is despairingly straight and unambitious.
A Master Builder began on the stage as Shawn and Gregory’s take on Henrik Ibsen’s late-career play Bygmester Solness (1892), a spare, creaky drama about what we would now call a starchitect. (Shawn translated the play and Gregory produced it.) Halvard Solness (Shawn), the Master Builder, once designed grand churches with impossible towers; now, after personal tragedy and wracked with existential guilt, he’s focused on “homes for people to live in.” A good elevator pitch, but one that ignores his rampaging ego and reptilian machinations that ruined his mentor, Brovik (Gregory); holds down Brovik’s son, Ragnar (Jeff Biehl); toys with Ragnar’s fiancé (and Solness’ bookkeeper), Kaia (Emily Cass McDonnell); and keeps his wife, Aline (Julie Hagerty), in an emotional prison. Only when the young, mysterious (and possibly divine) Hilde (Lisa Joyce) appears at the Solness home does Halvard discover something akin to empathy and humanity.
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.