Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the last report from Opie's Sundance extravaganza. Here he adds his voice to the choir of singing praise for Peter Sarsgaard in THE DYING GAUL. I can't wait to see it, sounds amazing. Check it out!
Hey, everyone. Got back from Sundance, and after a couple of days to finally decompress back home in Orange County (that talkbacker was right - we never referred to it as "The OC".... until that damned TV show came along, and now everyone does), I am ready to share my impressions of the last two films I saw this week.
BETWEEN
Poppy Montgomery is both very hot, and an extremely talented actress. That she is wasted on material like this is a tragedy. Montgomery does show remarkable range here, while sifting through this mess of a plot, which goes virtually nowhere for most of its running time, then immediately tries to play catch-up with rapid-fire startling revelations that pretty much negate everything that came before, and go against everything we know about human nature.
Some will think the twists and surprises here are brilliant, and God bless them. For the sake of the Donald Kaufmans of the world, I will not "spoil" them here. Hence, all I can pass on is that the film involves Montgomery as Nadine, a woman searching in Tijuana for her sister, who is named Dianne (or IS she?), who has gone missing (or HAS she?). Sooner or later, her husband shows up to aid her in her quest (or DOES he???), she follows a trail of ominous clues (or... DOES SHE????), confronts strange characters (OR DOES SHE????) that lead her straight into the darkest recesses of the human soul (OR DO THEY??????????)... etc, etc, etc.
Movies like the Signs, or Sixth Sense (which pull you in with well-drawn characters, hold you in suspense, convince you that they are about something scary and sinister until the last moment when they gently let you know that something deeper has been going on this whole time)... These movies are brilliant. I love them, but they do have one main drawback: They make it look easy. They convince novice filmmakers that such a delicate journey is all about the plot twist, and they completely ignore the emotional journey, the very thing that pulls a viewer into movies like this in the first place. When a filmmaker pulls the rug out from under the audience, it's not the actual rug-pulling that's brilliant. It's establishing that feeling beforehand, that we're standing on solid ground, that takes genius.
The key to a really great plot twist, I was told, lies first in convincing the audience of one reality, or version of the truth, then presenting them with a completely different, and easily believeable reality that makes sense with everything we've already seen. The Usual Suspects did it. The Sixth Sense did it. Vanilla Sky? Well, see that's what I'm trying to get at...
But at least Vanilla Sky gave you some interesting characters, a plot, and emotional dynamics before it went off the rails. Between, which has much in common with the Crowe film, does not ground itself in any sort of reality, and throws recurring motifs around (clocks all reading the same time, cracks on a ceiling, the number 217) with impunity, giving an audience the feeling that they're watching some sort of magic trick from the get-go, and completely destroying any semblance of suspense.
THE DYING GAUL
This was the closer of the festival for me. The one that made it okay to go home. And there was a reason I jokingly referred to it as "The Passion of the Sarsgaard" earlier this week.
The Dying Gaul is a simple, three-character psychological drama that smolders with tension throughout, about has an emotional heft that will leave you bruised at its end. After nearly sleeping through the entirety of Between, it was a miracle that this film made up almost completely of conversations was able to hold my attention, much less captivate and hypnotize me the way it did. Part of it has to do with the beautiful photography, which will probably go unnoticed is this very talky film. The world created here of the studio head's gorgeous glass house on a hill, contrasted with the writer's grimy, dank pit of an apartment, the film is equal parts shadow and light. Perhaps it's the way the characters manipulate each other, with subtle suggestion giving way to full-blown verbal suckerpunches. The audience I saw it with was too stunned to applaud for the first minute or so when the credits began to roll, and then they roared with applause.
Giving away too much about this film is nothing short of criminal, so the simplest version of the story goes something like this: The Dying Gaul is the brutal story of the complicated relationship that a young screenwriter develops with a studio executive and his wife, once he sells the executive his autobiographical script, about the death of his gay lover.
While Patricia Clarkson and Campbell Scott, and the executive and his wife, both give incredible performances, the star of this picture is Peter Sarsgaard as the screenwriter. His performance is such a symphony of pain, a delicate and raw exploration of human torture, that it is breathtaking to behold. Sarsgaard walks around with a huge weight on his shoulders, both in terms of the emotional baggage that his lover's death has left him with (and more than one would expect, for much darker reasons), and the fact that he becomes privy to all manner of information that he must withhold from one person or the other in that great glass house on the hill. The journey in this film is really the one taken by Sarsgaard, and he shows, once again why virtually every performance he gives is magical. Argue with me if you want, but after his turns in Shattered Glass, Garden State, and Kinsey, the dude is on quite a roll. But as much as you have come to expect great things from him, his work here will simply shock you.
On that note, I wrap up my Sundance coverage for 2005. I hope you enjoyed my reviews, and I'll be back next year to do it all again. Here's a recap of the Sundance films that I saw this year, on a five-star scale:
Layer Cake - Stylish, brutal English crima drama. I think everyone has pretty much reached a consensus here. Go see it. ****
Symbiopscyhotaxiplasm - Such a waste of time and money, I ought to charge someone just to write this sentence about it. (no stars)
9 Songs - Sex, Drugs, and Rock N' Roll without the drugs. Oh, and without much of a point or purpose, either **
Ellie Parker - Half brilliant, Half bullshit. ** 1/2
Dirty Love - So enjoyable, I went BACK to see it the very next night after I saw it, something I have never done in the four years I've gone to Sundance *****
Game 6 - Wordy, poignant film that most people will not be able to grasp completely, but that should at least entertain everyone who gives it a chance. ****
Pretty Persuasion - Though not original, still proves its worth with bitterly dark humor and a few brilliant performances *** 1/2
Between - If I was a big enough dickhead to give away this film's surprises, you'd nod and say, "Wow. That IS awful." But just take my word for it, ok? *
The Dying Gaul - Bloody brilliant. The kind of film you can't describe to people without using profanity. It usually sounds something like, "Man, that fucking... shit, man... (shaking head)... the movie was so fucking... so... goddamit, that was... that fucking movie..." *****
Opie out.
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