If you enjoy classical music and character-rich stories don’t miss A LATE QUARTET, a movie that arrived Friday at the Minor in Arcata. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Mark Ivanir and Catherine Keener it is directed by Yaron Zilbeman. The Fugue, a famous string quartet, is turning twenty-five, and like a marriage or a family that has been together for a long time, cracks are beginning to show. In spite of the A-list actors the movie is an ensemble piece in the way a string quartet is an ensemble, in the way the featured music, Beethoven’s Quartet in C sharp minor (Op. 131), is an ensemble piece. Some Rotten Tomato reviewers criticize the film as a melodrama. To me A LATE QUARTET is the opposite of a melodrama. No damsels strapped across the tracks with a train approaching in this film. Just talented, interesting, very human people struggling to balance their needs as individuals with their responsibilities toward an entity that is greater and a music that is more noble than any one of the individuals could possibly be alone.