I really do enjoy Dame Maggie Smith as an actress. Since I first saw her as Professor
MacGonagall in the Harry Potter films,
I’ve immensely enjoyed her embittered old woman shtick, particularly during the
six year run of Downton Abbey. So I was understandably intrigued by The Lady in the Van, a film billed as a
Maggie Smith vehicle, potentially her last as she seemingly edges toward
retirement. Unfortunately, I have to
deliver the news that The Lady in the Van
is not all that great a film to possibly end Dame Smith’s career on, perhaps
because her talent isn’t allowed to star in it.
Ostensibly based on true events, the film follows Alan
Bennett (Alex Jennings) and his relationship with an old homeless woman who
drives around parking her van on his street.
Her name is Mary Shepherd (Dame Smith), and her general cantankerous
nature and disheveled appearance does not ingratiate her with the local
middle-upper class residents of the neighborhood. When the police finally place a notice on her
van to move, and she has nowhere else to go, Alan invites Mary to park her van
in his driveway until she can get her affairs in order. She continues to stay for the next fifteen
years, mostly due to Alan’s ambivalence to her comings and goings.
Dame Smith is, as per usual, a fun presence on screen,
exaggeratedly curmudgeon-y and incredibly heartfelt when the moment calls for
it. That’s why it’s a pity that the
screenwriter, the autobiographical Alan Bennett, chooses to focus on himself
rather than on his title character. He’s
an author by trade and he takes every opportunity to tell you so, using
alliterative turns of phrase in forced voiceovers that only ever expound on his
boring, uninteresting feelings. He acts
as a constant reminder of the film’s themes, drawing parallels between Mary and
his own mother whom he must care for, and drawing distinctions between the
fiction of the film and the reality of actual events. It’s an artistic choice that is meant to come
across as endearing but is instead tedious and redundant, hammering home concepts that could readily speak for themselves.
But perhaps most baffling is the insistence on Alan being
portrayed as two characters by the same actor: “the one who lives” and “the one
who writes.” The two are both portrayed
by Alex Jennings, who isn’t necessarily a bad actor, but the character’s lack
of charisma does not make his masturbatory conversations at all entertaining to
observe. No other character ever sees
Writer Alan, so these exchanges between the divergent aspects of Alan’s personality
only serve as a pretentious way to portray his authorial inner monologue and
highlight his character growth, though his character isn’t the interesting
one. Revelations about Mary’s past are
practically an afterthought, a minor mystery that should have been an
investigative focus of an actually interesting person’s life.
The result is a film that feels like a poor imitation of the
works of Charlie Kaufman: a high concept gimmick that doesn’t have any high
concepts to support it. Alan Bennett’s
telling of Mary Shepherd’s life is ultimately narcissistic to the point where
it likely doesn’t do justice to the real woman, and it certainly does
not do justice to Dame Maggie Smith’s performance. I don’t blame Dame Smith for the film’s
shortcomings, but I do hope that this is not the last role we see her in, for
that would be the greatest tragedy of all.
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