‘Four Quartets’ Review: A Film of Ralph Fiennes’ One-Man Show Channels the Majesty of T.S. Eliot
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In college one night, I got very stoned and read T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” I was gripped by it, and felt I understood it — a feat I’ve never come close to accomplishing since. Yet I don’t think I was under some delusion about having glimpsed the poem’s essence. Eliot was a mystic doomsayer whose verse was torn, as if by shrapnel, with fragments of misanthropy and heartbreak. He channeled the despair of the 20th century but did it with a glint of rapture (to contemplate it was to be alive). To connect with his poetry, you almost need to leave rationality behind, to give yourself over to the experiential quality of Eliot’s words. I think the reason I could grasp Eliot while stoned is that I forgot I was reading “poetry,” forgot that I was facing stanzas arranged in elegant pieces on a page. Instead I was living each word, each phrase, as its own moment.