Emotionally intense `Dead' touches a raw nerve
By MATT NANIA
Scene Movie Editor
Absolutely gripping from its first frame, "Waking the Dead" begins in 1974 with a young Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) being torn apart from the inside out as he watches news coverage of a car-bombing that killed his peace activist girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly).
Although the movie has yet to reveal anything discernible about these two people, simply watching Crudup shake uncontrollably in an eruption of tears is enough to take hold of your empathy through the heartbreak and borderline dementia that consume him throughout the story's decade span.
"Waking the Dead," which opened back in March 2000, is an eerie, enigmatic, intellectual romantic tragedy about a rising politician haunted by memories of his murdered love. Adapted from the novel by Scott Spencer and directed by Keith Gordon ("A Midnight Clear"), this complex, engrossing film is masterful in putting us inside Fielding's broken-mirror mind.
Sliding back and forward effortlessly between two time periods, "Waking the Dead" tracks both Fielding's cerebral and spiritual romance with Sarah (Connelly) in the years before her death, and his growing obsession with fleeting visions of her 10 years later as he's being groomed for a seat in congress.
From '72-'74, Fielding is a determined idealist, building a devoted relationship with Sarah, who has dedicated herself to a sanctuary movement in war-torn Chile. Turned on by each other's intellects and convictions, Crudup and Connelly powerfully portray a realistic screen love presence. Their flirting, their philosophical give-and-take and even their arguments are authentic and absorbing.
Without Sarah to keep him grounded, by 1982 Fielding has become a district attorney, hand-picked by the governor to run in a special election for a senator's abandoned office.
Now colder and almost perfunctory, he's on the verge of losing his soul to the political machine when he begins having visions of Sarah that shake him to his core and threaten his sanity.
To call this movie a love story is a little limiting. The heart of the film is the relationship between the two leads, but the real focus is Crudup's character and the motions he takes in dealing with that relationship. Fielding is about to become everything he's always wanted to be: a leader, someone who can make a difference, someone who stands for something. But, under the glare of the microscope, his past starts to haunt him. He keeps seeing the woman he loved, the woman he has never been able to let go of, the woman who died 10 years ago.
With each apparition, his world begins to unravel. His mind takes him deeper and deeper into the past, until he can't tell whether he is self-destructing or finally coming to truth and closure.
Normally, films progress from A to Z. But "Waking the Dead" jumps back and forth across a 10-year gap, and each period informs the other. In seeing Fielding later and seeing how he's changed since losing Sarah, we care about him much more. Going back and seeing those earlier love scenes has a great deal more poignancy and depth. It adds an extra layer of power because every time the story goes back to look at the past, we know about the future.
Not only does Gordon have confidence in his storytelling abilities, but he also has enough confidence in Crudup to let the under-appreciated actor take his character to exhausting depths of grief and delusion.
Gordon does the same for Connelly, who is finally given an opportunity to play a character of real substance (much like her role in "Requiem for a Dream," only more substantial). Here she gives the best performance of her career.
"Waking the Dead," though, is Fielding's story, and Crudup, who's in practically every scene of the film, is terrific. His role is a very difficult one. On the one hand, Fielding is a very charismatic, Robert Kennedy-esque politician. But, on the other hand, he's someone who's incredibly tormented, in a very spiritual, inner way. Crudup (last seen in "Almost Famous" and "Jesus' Son"), with his enormous range, is able to do both — brilliantly.
Despite the presence of some apparitions, "Waking the Dead" isn't a "Sixth Sense" type of thriller. There are no spooky "I see dead people" chills here. It is more of an emotional ghost story, in a quiet, uneasy way. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of "Dead" is the fact that it is so intimately about one man's nervous breakdown. Watching a man crumble emotionally onscreen is not something we see often, and the sheer rawness of Crudup's performance alone is startling.
The languid pace and intimacy of "Waking the Dead" will frustrate and disquiet many moviegoers, but it does what good art should: It rattles you, makes you think and makes you feel.
--Video Pick of the Week
All Scene Stories for Thursday, February 22, 2001
