Long Day's Journey into Night

Toronto Sun, September 13, 1996

Hutt, Henry take us on a magnificent journey

By JOHN COULBOURN

As theatre, the Stratford Festival's production of Long Day's Journey Into Night was such an impressive work that posterity deserved to have an actual second-by-second, scene-by-scene record of it.

But in a world where bad movies too often happen to good plays, who could blame the average theatre fan for the frisson of terror that marked the announcement that Stratford's triumph was about to be a movie?

Well, we can all relax. The movie, which opens today after a Toronto International Film Festival showcase, is certainly worthy of Eugene O'Neill's stageplay.

Working with a cast honed to a razor's edge by stage director Diana Leblanc, movie director David Wellington has produced an engrossing film that allows the O'Neill classic to soar as high as it ever did on stage.
And yet, it is every inch a movie.

While it may not appeal to fans of the action/adventure genre, devotees of celluloid drama are certain to find this Journey every bit as engrossing as if it had been written specifically for the screen, despite its nearly-three-hour running time.

Of course, much of the credit for its lack of staginess must fall to director Wellington. Rather than `opening up the story' -- an intrusive little bit of celluloid surgery that usually results in the death of the patient -- Wellington has opted to close it up instead, thereby heightening the claustrophobia at the heart of O'Neill's dysfunctional family tale.

He accomplishes this by largely ignoring John Dondertman's fine set and Linda Muir's costumes, focusing his lens instead on his cast. It's a technique that turns performances by Stratford veterans William Hutt, Martha Henry, Tom McCamus, Peter Donaldson and Martha Burns into character studies of breathtaking intimacy and stunning clarity. In these performances, the characters never slip to let us see the actors behind them.

Having said that, however, it is in the performances of Hutt and Henry that the film ultimately triumphs. As James and Mary Tyrone, they are actors in complete control of their craft, creating a marriage that echoes with history and still, bizarrely rings with faint hope, despite years of emotional duelling and its subsequent carnage.

These are, simply stated, some of the finest performances ever captured on celluloid, Canadian or otherwise.