A Master Builder

Vanya on 42nd Street is, to date, my favorite film of the year. The more I revisit it, the more I suspect it might be one of my favorites of all time. So discovering that Wallace Shawn had attempted something of a spiritual successor — this time with Ibsen instead of Chekhov — was cause for celebration. I'll admit that I'm more of a Chekhov man than an Ibsen one, but so much of what I loved about Vanya was not the script or the play itself; it was the interplay between the idea of theater and the idea of film. Vanya suggests a synthesis of the two forms through a shared goal of enchantment; the performances are great and the material is great, but all the fourth-wall stuff is meaningful on a level beyond devotion to the play itself. A Master Builder comes two decades later, directed this time by Jonathan Demme (of Stop Making Sense and a slew of others.) Demme appears to be going for something quite different -- or at least achieves (though that implies a certain intentionality) a…

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