Jessica Lange’s Cinematic Majesty Brightens O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’

Jessica Lange became an instant star half a century ago, playing a sexy damsel in distress in the 1976 remake of “King Kong.” She has since built and sustained a career defying such stereotypes, in roles ranging from Hollywood casualty Frances Farmer to a mentally unstable housewife in 1994’s “Blue Sky,” winning her second Academy Award for the latter.In recent decades, Ms. Lange has found even meatier parts on the stage, prominent among them Mary Tyrone, the morphine-addled matriarch in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” the essentially autobiographical play that posthumously earned Eugene O’Neill one of a record four Pulitzer Prizes. The actress collected a Tony Award in 2016 for her performance, in a Broadway revival helmed by the venerated director Jonathan Kent.Mr. Kent and Ms. Lange have reunited for a new screen adaptation of “Journey” that was introduced at last year’s Dublin International Film Festival. Now showing at selected theaters, it’s at once another testament to their artistic chemistry and an exhibit of how talents nurtured in one entertainment medium can translate to and enhance work in another. This is, predictably, a different “Journey” than the one taken by the director and his leading lady on stage, which I was fortunate enough to catch. For starters, the new movie, featuring a screenplay by Tony and Pulitzer-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, is shorter, clocking in at just under two hours; that’s roughly an hour less time than the 1962 film version, featuring Katharine Hepburn.That’s not to say this “Journey” feels in any way stunted, a complaint many critics leveled against an abridged, updated version, adapted by Robert O’Hara, that ran off-Broadway a few years ago which I didn’t see. Mr. Lindsay-Abaire has handled serious subject matter with wit and whimsy in many of his plays, but to his credit, he clearly made no attempt to diminish the unrelenting grimness that makes “Journey” the mother of all dysfunctional-family dramas — at least by American playwrights.Mr. Kent has assembled a superb cast to manage the material: Ms. Lange is accompanied by Ed Harris, cast as Mary’s husband, James Tyrone, a rakish former actor and an alcoholic, though functioning more highly in his addiction than his wife is in hers. Ben Foster plays Jamie, the elder of their two surviving sons, a failed actor now floundering with little empathy from his parents, whom he resents in turn.Jamie’s feelings are more complicated towards his younger sibling, Edmund, a character based on O’Neill. Sensitive and introspective, and diagnosed with consumption, Edmund, played here by Northern Irish actor Colin Morgan, is coddled more by his dad and particularly his mom, which doesn’t escape Jamie’s attention. But Jamie also loves and sympathizes with his brother, who must bear the burden of knowing that Mary traces her troubles to his birth.Messrs. Foster and Morgan deftly illustrate the tension and ambivalence between the brothers. The latter actor has an extremely expressive face, with almost feline features that can hint at mischief and knowing, especially in closeup, so that it’s impossible to dismiss Edmund as a victim.Throughout the film, in fact, Mr. Kent uses the sense of intimacy and scrutiny afforded by cinema to capture and emphasize details that might get lost on stage, certainly to anyone in the cheap seats. The lack of vanity that has helped his older stars continue to thrive in film and theater serves them well in this regard: You can see every line on Ms. Lange’s and Mr. Harris’s faces, and they become reflections of their characters’ anguish and regret, adding to the power and nuance of both portraits.Mr. Kent’s director of photography, Mark Wolf, gives the Tyrones’s seaside home in Connecticut, which we visit over the course of a single day, a distinctly haunted vibe. At one point, when everyone in the family is out, the camera offers a tour of various empty rooms; the effect is ominous while underlining the disappointment and abandonment they all feel in some way.But the most striking and wrenching visuals, like those facial lines, come from the actors: Mr. Harris’s tears as James tries to confront his wife about her sickness, or the desperation and denial summoned by Ms. Lange’s Mary as she tries to reassure him, and herself; or the glazed, lost look in her eyes as she recalls her younger, happier days to their housekeeper, Cathleen (an earthy, charming Ericka Roe).Despite the fundamental economy of its approach, then, this “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” retains the gradually harrowing impact that O’Neill’s title suggested from the beginning. Arrive prepared, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with the play — but do see it.

Jessica Lange’s Cinematic Majesty Brightens O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’

Jessica Lange’s Cinematic Majesty Brightens O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’

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