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| Wallace Shawn and Lisa Joyce in A Master Builder |
Cast: Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Lisa Joyce, Larry Pine, Andre Gregory, Jeff Biehl, Emily Cass McDonnell. Screenplay: Wallace Shawn, based on a play by Henrik Ibsen. Cinematography: Declan Quinn. Production design: Eugene Lee. Film editing: Tim Squyres.
The symbolic realism of Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder gets a shrewd cinematic twist in the version scripted by Wallace Shawn and directed by Jonathan Demme called A Master Builder. I think the shift from the definite article in the title of the play to the indefinite one is probably a deliberately subtle one, indicating that the film is as much an interpretation of the play as it is a translation from one medium to another. Demme and Shawn don't "open up" the play in the usual manner of adapting play to movie, by shifting scenes from the confines of a set. Instead they use surprise cuts: We initially see Halvard Solness (Shawn), the title character, lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to monitors, but suddenly and without explanation, Solness is up and about, wearing a dressing gown, and the bed and monitors disappear. By the end of the film, Solness is bedridden again, and we are left to assume that much of what has taken place in the film has perhaps been only in Solness's imagination. It's still very much a play, however, and a talky one with lines that need the kind of emphatic delivery by the actors that's more appropriate on a stage than in a film. Shawn is not the first actor who comes to mind when you read Ibsen's play, but he's splendid in the role of Solness, managing to efface our memories of his performances as a comic character actor in movies like Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995) and The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987), just as Julie Hagerty overcomes memories of the ditzy characters of Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1980) and Lost in America (Albert Brooks, 1985) as the haunted Aline Solness. Lisa Joyce finds a solid center in the enigmatic and unhinged role of Hilde Wangel.
