‘Four Quartets’ Review: Virtuosi in Verse

The English poet T.S. Eliot composed the poems that make up the work eventually published as “Four Quartets” over the course of six years, and at the end of his literary career. The four elegiac, epic poems total more than 1,000 lines, and are devoted to time and divinity. To perform them in a single staged performance is an exercise of memory and sheer will. In 2021, Ralph Fiennes accomplished the feat, acting out Eliot’s “Four Quartets” in a lauded solo production that toured in the United Kingdom, including a run at London’s Pinter Theater. His sister Sophie Fiennes filmed an adaptation of the production after the actor’s live performances ended.

Her filmed version uses the original theatrical stage, with towering walls and minimal set decorations. Her camera occasionally sneaks glimpses of existence outside the theater — shots that conjure the views of Eliot’s England, a world of moss-covered stone and fields of grass-fed cows. But there is no visible audience, no sign of a human presence beyond Ralph Fiennes himself.

As an actor, Fiennes contorts, stomps and dances — he delivers an animation of Eliot’s language, a forceful performance that treats the accumulation of verse into poetry like the strenuous, mathematical raising of walls in a cathedral. He speaks slowly, granting viewers time to grasp Eliot’s words. Yet for all of the actor’s efforts, the film around him does not match his mellifluousness.

The camera remains at a distance, and the editing is prosaic, refusing opportunities to add a cinematic interpretation to complement Fiennes’s central performance. The static images recall the views from live theater, where the eyes of the audience are limited by the proscenium and the angle of a particular seat to the stage. Fiennes brings the fire, yet the air around him remains unmoved, even by his embers.

Four Quartets
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters.