When it came to lockdown projects at the start of the pandemic, reassessing and reorganizing one’s possessions was a clear favorite.version befit a consummate actor who’d long cherished T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”: to transfer the entirety of the poet’s epic meditation on time and humanity — over a thousand lines — to his memory, and from there to theater audiences at the first opportunity.
Fiennes toured the U.K. with his one-man stage adaptation in 2021, and shortly afterward committed his widely praised performance to film, directed by his sister.
Fiennes is, of course, one of our more magnetically “present” actors, blessed with a bearish timbre both commanding and inviting. What I remember about the good fortune of once seeing him live in a small theater is that he could dissolve whatever space was between him and you, no matter where you sat.
Subsequently, the lens of cinematographer Mike Eley’s 16mm camera — an adroit choice for filming poetry come alive — no longer feels like a barrier separating the man on that spare, charcoal-slab set from our eyes and ears. Sophie Fiennes has an instinctive sense of when to cut to verdant fields or lapping, rocky shores as a way of breaking up the filmed-play vibe, and augmenting Eliot’s fertile, abstract imagery of regeneration and renewal.
“Four Quartets” is the definition of specialized fare for a niche audience, but in its purity of connection gets one to wonder why there aren’t more opportunities to see intimately staged theater performances preserved on film.