9/10
All-time worthy performances in Lumet's passion project.
24 December 2014
Sidney Lumet cites his adaptation of Long Day's Journey Into Night as his proudest and most satisfying piece of work. It's easy to see why. This account of a single day in the life of a dysfunctional family offers him the same scale and subdued creativity as 12 Angry Men with half the characters and twice the runtime. It boasts powerhouse performances from titans of cinema - Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robarbs and Dean Stockwell deliver all-time worthy work. It's dense in dialogue and character, resulting in a whirlwind 3 hours that holds you in every moment. It's drenched in compelling drama, exploring identifiable regrets, vices, resentment and paranoia. It may be an ugly side to people, but it's truthful. Although it's been criticized for being too stagey, and although the acting may be theatrical, Lumet's stark poetic photography does half the emoting and compliments the character work perfectly. This is how it should be done.

9/10
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