A Delicate Balance

There are some things Groggy doesn't get, and Edward Albee is among them. Granted, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) is watchable due to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor's chemistry and especially Mike Nichols' expressive direction. But Tony Richardson's A Delicate Balance (1973) manages to be unpleasant drama and cinematically dull.

Aged New England couple Agnes (Katharine Hepburn) and Tobias (Paul Scofield) live in torment beneath their seemingly ideal marriage. Agnes' layabout sister Claire (Kate Reid) sits around drinking and flinging insults. Their oft-divorced daughter Julia (Lee Remick) stops by for a visit, as do friends Edna (Betsy Blair) and Harry (Joseph Cotten). In fact every horrible human on Earth flocks to their hovel, causing no end of collective misery. Understandably, Agnes and Tobias reach the point where they can't stand it any longer.

A Delicate Balance is a production of the American Theater Company, who produced several low budget but high prestige stage adaptations through the '60s and '70s (see Galileo). Fortunately this means big stars, name directors and acclaimed material, but also economical presentation. Richardson directed stage plays himself, and did a creditable job bringing Look Back in Anger to the screen, but here seems content to point the camera and roll film. This static approach is deadly in any movie, especially a talky play adaptation.

That leaves the play. Albee's work has one hurdle I can't overcome: the characters start out horrible and remain that way throughout the play. Agnes and Tobias are at daggers-drawn from line one, Claire belches drunken rants from the sidelines and other misanthropes eventually join them, in an unrelieved atmosphere of psychic rot. All these interactions highlight what a sorry bunch of losers we're stuck with for 132 minutes. What drama comes from that? There's no plot or character development driving things, no catharsis achieved, only misanthropy posited as insight.

I realize such simplistic criticism makes me sound like a pleb. Groggy has considerable tolerance for theatrical misanthropy, be it August Strindberg, John Osborne or even Neil LaBute, and can find value even in something like Germany Year Zero. But Balance has little to offer beyond acerbity. We're clued into the protagonists' fractious back stories (Julia's disastrous marriages, Claire's struggle with alcoholism) but they register largely as informed traits, hammered home by dialogue rather than events onscreen. The play only shows its protagonists as hideous gargoyles decaying in their misery, no hint of even exterior charm or contentment. The idea they could ever have  felt enough emotion to regret their current lassitude rings false.

Katharine Hepburn's shrill, harping qualities are only enhanced by Albee's dialogue. Kate Reid gives a performance so hammy the Quran forbids watching her. Paul Scofield retreats into brooding reserve, coming off much better in comparison. Lee Remick (Anatomy of a Murder) also acquits herself well. Joseph Cotten and Betsy Blair (Marty) are mere patsies to the protagonists' self-destruction.

Ordinarily I enjoy tearing bad movies apart, but I get no relish knocking down A Delicate Balance. This review will probably ruffle some feathers; the play it's based on won a Pulitzer, for God's sake. So be it; you can't "get" everything. Spending two hours with horrible people isn't Groggy's idea of fun.