The Great Lillian Hall: Movie Review

Cast: Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Pierce Brosnan

Director: Michael Cristofer

Jessica Lange's at her absolute best as Broadway actress Lillian Hall, whose life and livelihood begin to fall apart after she finds herself confused.

Rehearsing for play The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov, Hall is the drawcard for crowds before rehearsals begin to fall apart. Decried as "she was the best on Broadway", those involved in the production begin to panic, fearing for their future and the play's.

With weeks to go, she's fluffing lines, starting to see her dead husband and collapsing on stage. 

However, things take a turn for the worse when her doctor diagnoses her with dementia - the death knell for her both personally and professionally. Determined to keep it from her family and resolute that the show must indeed go on, she falls on to longtime assistant and friend Edith (Kathy Bates) for support.

There's a subtlety at play here with Michael Cristofer's gentle touch with the story matter, which only occasionally teeters into sentimentality.

But while it occasionally lapses into cliche and melodrama (chiefly in interactions between Lange and her character's daughter played by American Horror Story's Lily Rabe), there's a feeling that the movie's trying to handle the subject both sensitively and realistically. It grapples with the reality of the disease and the horror experienced by its victims.

Fortunately, Lange elevates the material here, handling everything that's required of her with grace and brilliance. Providing an insight into mortality and the pain caused by such a debilitating disease, Lange brings her absolute best to a character who's struggling to hold onto what makes her human.

Equally impressive is Bates as the assistant who's been paid in advance for 20 years of work by her employer's former husband but who knows both the frailty of the disease and the destruction it wreaks on both its subject and those around them.

As a result The Great Lillian Hall emerges as a sensitive portrayal of a heart-rending topic that's occasionally mesemerising to watch thanks to its restraint and a reminder of the powerhouse that is Jessica Lange.