THE STORY – Documentary following 90-year-old theater legend André Gregory and two longtime collaborators, Larry Pine and Gerry Bamman, as they film a reading of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” in Pine’s Long Island home, despite physical challenges.
THE CAST – Gerry Bamman, André Gregory & Larry Pine
THE TEAM – Cindy Kleine & André Gregory (Directors)
THE RUNNING TIME – 88 Minutes
Actor Andre Gregory has been part of the avant-garde scene for nearly 60 years, and of niche, experimental filmmaking since 1981’s “My Dinner With Andre” and “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Now, at well over 90, he reunites with old collaborators for perhaps one last hurrah in this touching, emotional documentary that had its World Premiere at this year’s Telluride Film Festival.
Gregory and his collaborators are known, in part, for staging five different low-budget versions of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame.” Unlike the Marvel film with the same name, Beckett’s absurdist tragicomedy play was billed as a sequel to “Waiting for Godot,” though it ended up being more existentialist, like Sartre’s “No Exit.” In “Endgame,” two characters are codependent on each other towards the end of their lives. One cannot walk; the other cannot see and must stand the entire time. The principal character’s parents have no legs and live in a dustbin. The main characters banter about their lives as they approach their ends.
“One More Time” is a story of Gregory and actors Gerry Bamman (Uncle Frank in “Home Alone”) and Larry Pine, who has appeared in a series of films and plays including a recent rash of Wes Anderson films, “Dead Man Walking,” and “Vanya on 42nd Street,” acting out the play they have been so familiar with throughout their lives. The twist is that Bamman is mostly confined to a wheelchair and Pine is suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. Despite these challenges, they are aided by Gregory’s longtime partner Cindy Kleine, and this version of their project is supposed to be on film. While they film this version of the play, Kleine documents them, directing the documentary with Gregory, set entirely in the couple’s Long Island home.
As they try to recapture the beauty of what they once had, the longtime friends move through different emotions about their present circumstances. Andre, the oldest of them, focuses intently on the idea of death, the imminence of the “endgame.” Pine is grateful for an extra day, his memory frustratingly abandoning him as he tries to deliver his lines. He is perhaps the most optimistic, pointing out that there are some things you simply do not want to remember. Bamman is forlorn about his youth, the one with perhaps the most regret. The friends also discuss the present moment, and though the person at issue is never mentioned by name (thankfully), the line from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” is used to describe the current state of affairs—“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
As the actors—mostly Bamman and Pine—struggle through the purposefully challenging facets of the one-time play, “One More Time” reveals its intimate, thoughtful, and ultimately tremendously emotional layers. The realization that you are near the end of your life is obviously the central theme, the theme of Beckett’s play and the nested theme of the documentary. Beckett sees it as farcical, as something that is inherently so tragic it is comical. These friends, while rendering Beckett, see it much differently. To them, the end of life is sad, sure, but also an opportunity. It is a moment of reflection, a chance to look back and keep looking forward. The most important message of all is that the end of life does not mean that an artist needs to stop creating. As one of the actors so aptly explains, creating is the only way, the best way of living, even if it is simply a part of waiting around to die.
Kleine’s direction is mostly simple and serves the talented, lesser-known actors very well. She closes in on the actors, unafraid of their aging tenderness, their failing bodies. She realizes that their talent as actors, to portray such a difficult play, is boundless and can transcend the aging façade. And talented they are. Even as Pine struggles mightily to deliver even simple lines, and Bamman covers his face like a pall, both convey the powerful, quiet, but unforgiving tragedy that Beckett’s play demands while betraying their own vastly less sad existences. These three have had a good life because they did what they enjoyed, and while they may not have been aware of or interested in their mortality decades ago, their desire to live existed then as well.
“One More Time” is at its lowest points when Kleine decides to intersperse the otherwise tight narrative with strange effects, black-and-white pictures of trees, or moving smoke. The point of these interludes is not clear, but they are thankfully brief and fleeting. This is a movie about the reflections of its main characters, and Kleine sticks to her powerful subjects for the overwhelming part of the narrative.
“One More Time” may be slight in scope, but has the weight of a final curtain call. It never tries to convince you that Beckett or Gregory and his friends are timeless or great. Instead, it captures the stubborn, moving insistence of artists who keep working when everything else has fallen away. For anyone willing to meet this documentary on its quiet, intimate terms, the film becomes not merely a record of one last performance, but a touching reminder that art remains one of the few meaningful ways to combat death, even if it’s ephemeral.
