Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer-prize winning four act play, was first published posthumously in 1956. It has since been adapted five times for television and screen, with Broadway and West End adaptations of the play scooping multiple awards at the end of their run. Director Jonathan Kent’s version was actually filmed in 2022 and, now, has its UK premiere three years later.
The story takes place in 1912, centring around the Tyrone family. We spend a day with them – Mary (Jessica Lange) and her husband James (Ed Harris), along with their two sons, Jamie (Ben Foster) and Edmund (Colin Morgan). Over the course of this day, the family slowly disintegrates. Tempers flare; addictions spiral; inter-generational trauma re-emerges like a weed; unrealised ambitions appear like an old bruise. It’s an intense, volatile situation, set against the gathering fog that surrounds the Connecticut coast.
The word powerhouse is overused but Jessica Lange commands your attention from the offset of the film. She is rippling with an anxious energy that infiltrates everyone else’s mood. As the family gather around the breakfast table, she constantly readjusts her hair; wrings her hands; accuses others of staring at her and casts sideways glances at Jamie and James. She sets the tone – and it only gets worse from there.
But this is not some two dimensional period drama performance of a woman on the brink. Lange makes Mary pathetic, frustrating, loving and child-like. She constantly rakes over the past with a blend of nostalgia and disappointment, her nervous energy never allowing her to be still for long. Lange uses the rambling soliloquies to infuse nuance and empathy into Mary. As she wanders the creaky corridors of her home, hair loose and searching for a past life that no longer exists, you can’t help but want to wrap your arms around her. (And, conversely, at other times, shake her.) She expresses, regularly, how lonely she is and that is so palpable through her choked, high-pitched sobs. Lange presents us a shell of a woman and it’s almost hurtful to watch.
Ed Harris is a capable co-lead as former actor, James. His whisky soaked reminisces of his failed career are full of bruised ego and artistic fragility. His adult life is informed by his poverty-stricken childhood, meaning he is often accused of skimping on healthcare for his addict wife and his ill son. In sepia-toned lighting, over a cigar and a game of cards, his agonising monologue about a career that never was is one of the most tragic moments of the film.
Ben Foster and Colin Morgan do an excellent job supporting the two acting titans playing their parents. Foster’s Jamie is arrogant and crude, content to do the least amount of work and the most amount of spending possible. Morgan’s Edmund is dying of consumption, as blood spattered handkerchiefs allude to, and has to bear the truth that his mother never wanted to have him. Both seem to want to have an honest conversation with their parents about the dysfunction ripping through their home, but social etiquette dictates a lack of honesty until the whisky bottle is opened.
Much like the play, Jonathan Kent keeps this family drama to a single location. This adds yet another layer of intensity to an already desperate situation. There are close ups designed to let you see agony, exhaustion, nostalgia and lost dreams. It’s exquisitely done – intimate when it needs to be or like a picture frame to emphasise distance. The house creaks under the weight of the secrets that each character has been forced to confront; a palette of mahogany, sage and taupe keeping things neutral against such big personalities. Writer David Lindsay-Abaire does a great job of translating O’Neill’s play from stage to screen. There is absolutely no score beyond Mary’s short attempts at recapturing the piano playing skills of her youth. Instead, we are invited to wallow in the silence that punctuates weighty discussions or to listen for the trembling footsteps along the first floor.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is well worth the watch. Immerse yourself in the perfectly crafted dialogue and the phenomenally fragile performances that Lange and Harris, in particular, bring to the screen.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is screening at the Glasgow Film Festival. Get your tickets here.
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