It is frankly astonishing how contemporary nearly every word sounds despite these poems having been written over 80 years ago. Coming in at a brisk 80 minutes, the film often feels like a tactile representation of the general existential crisis the world was (is?) going through. None of this is meant to challenge Fiennes himself, who is the draw and the central focus––well, he and Eliot. The camera remains mostly stationary, though the editing jostles between full-frame wides and quietly intense close-ups. Hildegard Bechtler’s production design is spare yet effective, the lighting by Tim Lutkin pointed and emotional.
Fiennes himself is credited with the stage direction, his sister with the film direction, both working well. Eliot’s Four Quartets, directed by Sophie Fiennes and performed by her brother Ralph, is a decidedly worthwhile artifact of this precarious time.Īn adaptation of the series of four poems ( Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, Little Gidding) written just before––and then during––World War II by Eliot, the film is an elevated recording of the stage performance Ralph Fiennes took on in 2021. In those very hard (and very recent, and in some respects, very current) times, what did we write? What did we read? What did we watch? T.S. Art made during COVID––more specifically during quarantine and before / at the very beginning of the vaccine rollout––will surely hold an added weight as history is written.
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