T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (2023)
Director: Sophie Fiennes Run Time: 84 min. Release Year: 2022
Starring: Ralph Fiennes
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
About the film:
Official Selection, 2023 Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Ralph Fiennes’s exquisite performance of T. S. Eliot’s poetic masterpiece is dynamically translated from stage to screen by director Sophie Fiennes. During the early days of COVID, the Academy Award nominee set himself the challenge of committing Four Quartets to memory, and in 2021, he brought it to the London stage followed by a tour of theaters across the UK.
Written by Nobel Prize winner Eliot in the shadow of the Second World War, the poem is a searching examination of who – and what – we are. This celebrated meditation on human experience, time, and the divine offers up questions, imagery, and emotions that bear a powerful relevance to our present day.
“Lucid and searching, scorching and incantatory…through the drama of Fiennes’ presentation, [Eliot] comes across as nothing less than the 20th-century Shakespeare.”
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety
About the filmmaker:
Sophie Fiennes is a British director and producer known for creative documentary films that explore performance and identity. She collaborated with political philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek on two explorations of film, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2013). Her documentary about German industrial artist Anselm Kiefer, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010), opened as a special screening at Cannes. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017), her biographical documentary about Jamaican singer, premiered at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival. Fiennes studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and has also worked as a location manager.
See our upcoming films