Waking the Dead (film)

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Waking the Dead

Theatrical poster
Directed by Keith Gordon
Produced by Jodie Foster
Keith Gordon
Stuart Kleinman
Linda Reisman
Written by Robert Dillon (screenplay)
Scott Spencer (novel)
Starring Billy Crudup
Jennifer Connelly
Molly Parker
Janet McTeer
Paul Hipp
Sandra Oh
Hal Holbrook
Music by tomandandy
Cinematography Tom Richmond
Editing by Jeff Wishengrad
Distributed by Polygram USA
Release date(s) March 24, 2000
Running time 105 minutes
Country USA
Language English
Budget $8,500,000 (est.)
Gross revenue $327,418 (USA)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Waking the Dead is a 2000 American drama film directed by Keith Gordon. The screenplay by Robert Dillon is based on the novel of the same name by Scott Spencer.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The film flashes back and forth between the 1970s and 1980s and centers on the relationship between Fielding Pierce, a young Coast Guard officer with political ambitions, and radical and idealistic Roman Catholic Sarah Williams, who is drawn to programs designed to better the lives of the underprivileged and has mixed feelings about his career goals.

In the opening scene, Fielding sees a television news program reporting Sarah's death in a Minneapolis car bombing following a church-organized excursion to Chile to feed the poor and organize resistance to the oppressive right-wing government. He never quite recovers from the news, and he finds himself increasingly haunted by the past, in which the couple were as romantically close as they were politically apart, divided by his desire to work within the system and her conviction that it's the root of all evil. His obsession with Sarah slowly puts his career, forthcoming marriage, and sanity in jeopardy.

The question of whether or not Sarah actually was killed remains unresolved as Fielding's sister Caroline reports having seen her on the street some years later and Fielding himself supposedly meets her after being elected to the United States Congress, only to wonder afterwards if she merely was an hallucination.

[edit] Principal cast

[edit] Production

The film was shot in Montréal, Québec with a budget of USD $8.5 million. The character portrayed by Ed Harris was eliminated from the completed film, although he is seen briefly on a television screen. Sandra Oh appears in one short scene and has little dialogue; a longer scene with her was deleted but is included as an extra feature in the DVD release.

[edit] Soundtrack

[edit] Reception

Waking the Dead debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2000. It opened in Brazil one week later and Austria in February and was shown at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in early March before going into limited release in North America later that month. It went on to gross $327,418 in North America, well below its budget.[1]

In his review in the New York Times, Stephen Holden said, "In falling short of its goal, the movie raises the question of whether it's possible to film an intelligent tear-jerker that prompts us to think and cry at the same time. Or are serious suds and serious ideas a cinematic oxymoron? At its best, Waking the Dead suggests an intellectually upscale answer to Love Story. At its weakest, it comes off as a stiff, muted exercise in countercultural nostalgia . . . [it] makes a terrible mistake by continually and abruptly cutting back and forth between the 70s and the early 80s. The movie is forever stumbling over itself and breaking its own spell. At exactly the moment it begins to draw us in to one of its stories, it makes another leap, and the mood is broken. Because it barely distinguishes between the two decades, the flashbacks have none of the resonance of treasured memories." [2] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said the film "has a good heart and some fine performances, but is too muddled at the story level to involve us emotionally. It's a sweet film. The relationship between Sarah and Fielding is a little deeper and more affectionate that we expect in plot-driven melodramas." [3] In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle called it "a film teeming with riches. One of the most powerful romances of recent years, it is as generous as they come . . . an intelligent tale told with go-for-broke passion . . . Crudup and Connelly are splendid together . . . Waking the Dead gives us acting at its biggest and most beautiful." [4]

[edit] Awards

Robert Dillon was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay but lost to Kenneth Lonergan for You Can Count on Me.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Waking the Dead at The Numbers
  2. ^ New York Times review
  3. ^ Chicago Sun-Times review
  4. ^ San Francisco Chronicle review

[edit] External links

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