Clark describes Cézanne's mixed qualities as being of "seriousness and sensuousness — I am tempted to say, in the best, of lugubriousness and euphoria".
Called "the fierce little Sartrean" during his youth ("I thought, very naïvely, that serious literature never smiled," he has said), he worked hard to shed the lugubriousness that had earned him the nickname.
"Mr. Oldman gives the movie, which at its most serious veers into lugubriousness, a nice jolt and a flinty presence that Mr. Washington can spark against," Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times in January.
Mr. Lane is the only performer who sounds comfortable delivering Mr. Klein and Mr. Keller's often intentionally anachronistic dialogue, which, with its forced lightness and scattershot jokes, makes an awkward fit with Mr. Singh's lugubriousness.
At times, Mr. Capuçon lapsed into unabashed lugubriousness — that can be hard to avoid in the slow movement — but in the finale he regained the focus and zest that had enlivened his performance of the opening Allegro.
And if you know the 1958 book, to which this production is much truer than the film in details of plot, you may still be surprised by the atmosphere of lugubriousness that hangs over the show.
Mr. Oldman gives the movie, which at its most serious veers into lugubriousness, a nice jolt and a flinty presence that Mr. Washington can spark against.
Vicari's grandfather was a circus owner, and you can sense some of that theatrical lugubriousness in him.
The director of "Hex," Jimmy Hayward, whose first feature was the animated children's movie "Horton Hears a Who!," isn't Sergio Leone, but he maintains a lightness of touch throughout, a welcome change from the lugubriousness that tends to weigh down so many big-screen adaptations of comic books.
Lugosi, meanwhile, is all east European heaviness, lugubriousness, with his white face and stained black teeth.
The commentary, spoken with a soft lugubriousness by the 62-year-old Davies, begins with Housman's lament for 'those blue remembered hills' and 'the land of lost content', and constantly returns to Eliot's Four Quartets, as he faces the passage of time and regrets the death of hope and the destruction of community.
