WAKING THE DEAD A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
WAKING THE DEAD has an unintentionally ironic title. With exceedingly bland acting by the leads, Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly, and lethargic directing by Keith Gordon (A MIDNIGHT CLEAR), the movie is so comatose that audiences will want to shake it or do something to wake it up.
Gordon has all of his cast and crew on permanent slow-motion. People don't walk, they move at a glacial pace. Moss could start growing on their shoes at the rate at which they stroll across the stage. And the camera zooms and pans with excruciating slowness as if its gears are frozen from shooting the film's many snow-covered scenes.
The story, which moves back and forth among several timeframes, concerns a man who sees dead people, or, more precisely, one dead woman.
Fielding Pierce (Crudup) has a cushy job guarding New York's harbor for the Coast Guard during the Vietnam War. He is conflicted since he'd like to go AWOL to Canada to protest the war but worries that it might upset his ambition to be the President of the United States. One certainly couldn't be elected president, he reasons, after a visible protest against one's own country.
Fielding's girlfriend, Sarah Williams (Connelly), is an anti-war activist who encourages him to leave the country. A few years later, she is killed in Chile, where she has gone as part of the Sanctuary movement. After that, he follows a political career, while the dead Sarah keeps making guest appearances in his life.
The problem is that the plot's realization isn't the least bit convincing. Never do Fielding or Sarah seem genuinely interested in any of their causes or aspirations. Both show all of the emotive power of a stone. It isn't clear how Fielding could get any votes, much less get elected. He is an empty suit without any issues or even a decent stump speech. Sarah says that she's committed to her causes, but shows no authentic spark of compassion for the people to whom she devotes herself.
This leaves the movie to succeed or die based just on their love affair, which turns out to be the weakest link of all. Only when having sex do these lovers ever appear the least bit romantically inclined. At other times, they say the right words, but their vacant eyes show they are just reading their lines.
"If anybody really knew Kennedy, do you think they'd have ever voted for him?" Fielding's father asks him. The story implies that politicians must never reveal themselves to us if they want to get elected. The movie takes the same reticent approach, giving us trite speeches but little more. I'd recommend that you vote against it.
WAKING THE DEAD runs 1:45. It is rated R for sexuality and language and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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