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The
Life of David Gale is a movie that keeps telling you that
you are supposed to respect it that fails miserably at almost
ever turn.
Let’s
start out with the basics… love Alan Parker, love Kate
Winslet, love Laura Linney, like Kevin Spacey
as an actor. I
never read the book, but after seeing the film, I have to
say, it seems like a ripping yarn.
So
what went sooooo wrong?
Well,
to begin with, the film is well crafted enough to seem like
a “real” movie. But
there are so many problems.
I’m not one that feels sympathetic leads are a requirement
of any film. But interesting characters are an absolute must. Winslet plays Bitsy Titsy Witsy (or something
like that), the world’s least realistic feature story reporter. She is blonde. That was okay. After that,
forget about it.
As
the commercials tell you, this is a movie with a twist ending.
I won’t spoil that ending here.
But the entire experience of the Bitsy character in
the story of David Gale makes no sense. I can imagine ways in which her relationship
with David Gale could be made to make sense, in real time
and in retrospect of the twist.
But nothing that is in the movie makes any sense in
context.
Without
spoiling anything, Bitsy’s publisher pays Gale $500,000 for
his six hour interview. He
allows no recording devices.
Why? If she can save him, why not create a record
of evidence towards that end.
If she cannot, why not have a record of the truth?
Even after the twist, this is never clear and, in fact,
makes even less sense.
As
for Gale, he is a putz. A
guy who tells bad limericks, cheats on his wife and then becomes
a drunk is a really attractive hero.
More to the point, much of his protesting of his innocence
to Bitsy is nothing but a distraction.
If you see this thing, remember his yelps of protest
and then think about it later. Misleading Bitsy is one thing. But why? Any
reason other than screenwriting myopia?
The
only truly sympathetic character in the film is Laura Linney’s
Constance Hallaway. She
is mother earth. She
is kind beyond belief. She
is a true believer. Her actions are the only ones that I believe
from beginning to end. That
said, some of what occurs with her character devolves into
near humiliation because the film does not live up to the
bravery of Linney’s performance.
Perhaps
the greatest sin of David Gale is the story structure, which
probably made sense at some development stage. This is a clock movie that has no clock.
Parker, who has proven himself in other a work to be
a master of filmic time, seems to have lost his way completely
here. If the clock
worked, the twist ending would be twisted to maximum effect. But it’s almost as though he knew the twist, so he directed the
rest of the film in a vacuum.
Yet the characters don’t reflect the twist from the
start to the finish, as they should.
It
is a quandary.
The
Life of David Gale is a whodunit in which the effort to
figure out whodunit is wasted.
This is a love story the revels in co-dependency instead
of love. This is a political drama that is so simplistic
in its arguments that they shrivel into irrelevance.
It’s
really quite shocking, since Alan Parker has made chicken
salad out of chicken shit so many times, raising the bar. But there is something askew here. It looks okay. It has some strong emotional
moments. And some
absolutely laughable ones.
Just wait until you see Kevin Spacey pretending
to be drunk or having a party where faculty and students drink
together en masse or playing a parent to a young child.
But
it all works out in the twist ending. And that just adds insult to injury. It’s really simple. The actions of Bitsy and David Gale make absolutely
no dramatic sense given the twist.
Think about the whole story and then you could come
up with a variety of ways in which the story could be told
and make sense without giving away the ending and be completely
compelling. All you
have to do is to let the two characters have real, honest
motivations. Both
characters could have real arcs, behaving like a reporter
who really wants a story and a man who is reluctantly giving
his story for money, and then showing each transformed by
the telling of the story, not mechanical (read: fake) outside
forces.
A
real shame.
Meanwhile,
Kevin Spacey’s post-Oscar career consists of this,
Pay It Forward, K-Pax and The Shipping News.
In other words, he’s made horrible choices.
And as much as he wants to play Bobby Darin,
this film will either be the first hit since American Beauty
or the likely end of his career as a lead actor.
After years of lingering, the sudden greenlight for
this project is probably a direct result of Chicago. Sadly, I suspect that this will be one of the
musical car wrecks in that film’s wake.
He’d
be better off playing the villain in a superhero movie.
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