For his fourth time in the directors chair NY based Israeli filmmaker Oren Moverman has adapted Herman Koch’s best selling novel The Dinner. It’s the story of two couples who get together for dinner somewhat reluctantly at a rid exclusive restaurant, and as the evening unfolds their polite exteriors disappear and by the time the night ends, it finishes with some very unpleasant accusations and recriminations.
The central character is Paul Lohman (Steve Coogan) an embittered ex public school teacher who has never managed to write his book on Gettysburg that he has threatened to do for years. To him this was not just a war but a metaphor for life in general. His long-suffering and patient wife Claire (Laura Linney) is in remission after a bout of cancer, and she tries her level best to improve her husband’s mood as she does now on a daily basis. They are going to be the guests of Paul’s older brother Stan (Richard Gere) who is a highly successful Congressman currently running for Governor. He is however not just bringing along his latest trophy wife Katlyn Rebecca Hall, but also key members of his Campaign Team, one of whom will constantly interrupt the whole evening with urgent phone calls for the Congressman.
It soon appears that this dinner is not intended as just a simple family reunion as we learn through a series of flashbacks that each couple has a teenage son and together they had been involved in a vicious prank which caused a fatality. Before they can even start to address this matter, there is so much built up resentment, mainly between the brothers, that the whole first part of the evening results with almost everyone at some time or other storming off and angrily leaving the table.
Paul is not just resentful of his brother’s success but he also has a big chip on his own shoulder about this own failure to achieve anything he has been happy with in his own life, plus his reluctance to admit that he actually has real issues with his mental stability.
When it finally comes to the point of discussing a plan on how to deal with their son’s culpability, it is hardly shocking that it quickly dissolves into yet another screaming match, but however it is surprising as to who will take the more moral stance on the issue.
This the second movie adaption of Koch’s novel (the first was a Dutch production in 2013) but coming in way too long at 120 mins, this movie suffered from feeling too much like a filmed staged play, and the incessant in-fighting really started to drag by the end. Interesting enough Koch, whose original story had been set in Amsterdam, said that he disapproved of the new movie adaption of his work claiming that it had cut out all the cynicism and had turned it instead into a moral tale that he had never intended it to be.
The cast, which also included Chloë Sevigny as one of Stan’s ex wives, put in their usual sterling performances, even though their was little fraternal chemistry between Coogan and Gere. Regardless of all this, the movie still seemed far less appetizing or exciting as the absurd concoctions of food being served up throughout the dinner, which were the real highlights of the movie
Labels: 2017, drama, Herman Koch
