A Master Builder

Wallace Shawn plays the role of Halvald Solness in this adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play.

Shawn wrote the script. It was first staged by his friend and frequent collaborator Andre Gregory, and finally directed by Jonathan Demme for the screen. It is a portrait of peoples' misery and how a young visitor, Lisa Joyce, shakes things up. When it's a fascinating story, Demme seems uncertain of how to translate it for the screen. There are long close-ups of the performers, varied by moving the camera a bit. As a result, while it remains good, the visuals stop it from being a superior movie. Still worth a look.

It's neat to see Jonathan Demme's direction of this, which was five years after the last feature film he made (Rachel Getting Married). It's still very good, as are his recent documentaries like My Cousin Bobby. You can tell this is a play adapted for the big screen but Wallace Shawn is amazing and as far as plays go you can't do much better than Ibsen. It's a great play and the adaption is good.

I can't help but feel that this will definitely be the kind of film that sort of warrants a rewatch in the future, especially because it just comes across as pretty complex, maybe too much so. It seems like a complicated play, but all I know is that the acting is outstanding. It has the sortof very dreamy, airy atmosphere that one wants out of a film like this, since it's the atmosphere that really help carry it even when the dialogue seems a bit puzzling. Overall, definitely has many admirable qualities, certainly not your run-of-the-mill stuff, but then again being based on a play one expects that. Many probably won't like it, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a definite winner.

This film is a story of the old gods. Solness is the Demiurgos, the Insane God who created the Earth and the Universe we live in.

Seen in this light, suddenly the film makes sense.

The dialogue is encoded. Note how the discussions in the first few scenes are nonspecific to the point of nonsense.

That is - unless you know the code.

They are talking about the creation of the Universe (by Solness), and who will take it over, and who will create the next one (the Villa by the Lake).

Does Ragnar have the Right Stuff to be a God? That is in question. Solness says "No".

Ragnar? Ragnarok, Chaos. The Undoing. The coming apocalypse that Kaia (Gaia) will participate in (the Wedding). This is about whether the Earth will go through Apocalypse, Chaos, and begin anew, or whether She will hang on with Solness in the old way, and try and work it out.

Solness is in love with Kaia, but in reality he wants to keep Ragnar (Lucifer?) close because he needs him. Light and Dark being nothing without each other. In this case Lucifer is not to be confused with Satan (Shaitan - the Opposer) who is mere darkness as in - when the old sun (Saturn) went away. He is The Light Bringer, the Shining One of Milton.

The film is also Masonic in a BIG way. But that is an easier decode, and I will leave it to "Jay" who works at that level.

This is a powerful adaptation of a great Ibsen play. And by "adaptation," I mean there's an interesting little spin that, while faithful to the original, gives this version a bit of a twist. I'm sure Ibsen would approve. But I can say no more about that without getting into spoilers.

Like everything written by Ibsen, this movie is dialogue-heavy. It's not for lovers of fast-moving flashy special effects or loud background music. You can't really watch it while surfing your cell phone; almost every line of dialogue teaches you more about the character and pushes the plot forward. Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn are both in this film - veterans of another dialogue-heavy film, "My Dinner With Andre." Every single member of the cast is very strong. "A Master Builder" is the first Ibsen play that I ever saw, forty years ago, and it got me hooked on Ibsen for life. Check this one out and see if it hooks you, too.