Based on the script as written, I can't imagine any director this side of Steven Soderbergh could have really handled Waking the Dead. This is a film that bounces through a nonlinear storyline and any number of genres and yet all the while is basically a showpiece for a single actor. Keith Gordon does what he can with the material, but despite a very strong ending I feel like he's overwhelmed slightly more often that he succeeds.
The film takes place in at least four separate time periods, two in the early seventies and two in the early eighties. The earlier periods are essentially the story of the romance between Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) and Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), young people of similar leftist ideology, but very different views of how to achieve political goals. Pierce, the son of a blue collar family, wants to take his Harvard diploma and law degree and turn himself into a Senator or a president. He joins the coast guard because he knows that taking a stand outside of the system will cost him his political life someday. She, on the other hand, is disgusted by the corruption of politics and works through the church and grass roots causes. And in 1974, as we're told through a television broadcast in the opening scene, Sarah was killed in a car bombing. Cut to 1983, where Pierce is being handed a Chicago congressional district by the local political bosses and he's in danger of becoming the kind of cog in the political wheel that Sarah most detested. And to make matters worse, he's started to see Sarah everywhere, becoming gradually more convinced that she's around, either as a ghost, a hallucination, or something else...
The film dances from time period to time period, generally in a simplistic fashion aimed at making clear how Pierce's idealism has been tampered with. For at least the first half of the film, the audience is informed of temporal (and geographical) switches by subtitles at the bottom of the screen. I have to admit that this bothered me. If a director wants to do an unconventional piece of storytelling, he should either have faith in the cinematic literacy of the audience or else he shouldn't bother. Gordon's decision to constantly tell the audience where he's going, both through the subtitles (i.e. "Chicago, 1973") and the editing marker of a burst of white light signaling flashes forward and back undermines his more intelligent efforts. The transitions in time are clunky and the film has a hard time segueing from romance to political thriller to tragedy to mystery. It's fine for a film to be a mix, but Waking the Dead feels like it's working too hard.
I'm not really sure where the currency is in this story that drew Gordon to it. The notion of a man haunted by both a literal spirit from his past and the metaphorical spirit of his lost ideals is hardly fresh and the story feels like it may have had more pep back in the mid-80s, when the shift of counter culture members to the political Right was more of a hot idea.
This being said, Gordon (who in my mind will always be the kid from Dressed to Kill) does excellent work with the actors in the film. This is especially true with Connelly, an actress who all too often finds herself cast for her curves and not enough for her acting muscle. Directors seem to get such a kick out of filming her body that they don't work with her performance. Gordon solves one of these problems by keeping Connelly in winter clothes for most of her performance. Rather than being the femme fatale, she's an Earth Mother. And it's a pleasant change. Sure she's beautiful and sexy, but she also has a lilting Southern accent (in most scenes) and a good screen presence.
I didn't put an "especially true" on Crudup's performance because I've simply come to expect very fine work from him. Crudup's film work began with him sleeping through performances in Sleeper and Inventing the Abbotts, but since then he's given one amazing performance after another, carrying films as diverse as the hugely underrated Without Limits and this year's triple crown of Jesus's Son, Almost Famous, and this film. His ability to deliver dialogue speaks to his theater background and he holds the screen remarkably well for a man who, as this movie visually emphasizes on several occasions, isn't of great stature. He's one of the best young actors working and this is an amazing showcase for him. As his character becomes more desperate and erratic, Crudup's performance just becomes better.
As I said, this film got better for me towards the end. However, there are huge patches where none of the scene transitions work at all. I'm giving it a 6/10, but I certainly think it has its rewards.
The film takes place in at least four separate time periods, two in the early seventies and two in the early eighties. The earlier periods are essentially the story of the romance between Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) and Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), young people of similar leftist ideology, but very different views of how to achieve political goals. Pierce, the son of a blue collar family, wants to take his Harvard diploma and law degree and turn himself into a Senator or a president. He joins the coast guard because he knows that taking a stand outside of the system will cost him his political life someday. She, on the other hand, is disgusted by the corruption of politics and works through the church and grass roots causes. And in 1974, as we're told through a television broadcast in the opening scene, Sarah was killed in a car bombing. Cut to 1983, where Pierce is being handed a Chicago congressional district by the local political bosses and he's in danger of becoming the kind of cog in the political wheel that Sarah most detested. And to make matters worse, he's started to see Sarah everywhere, becoming gradually more convinced that she's around, either as a ghost, a hallucination, or something else...
The film dances from time period to time period, generally in a simplistic fashion aimed at making clear how Pierce's idealism has been tampered with. For at least the first half of the film, the audience is informed of temporal (and geographical) switches by subtitles at the bottom of the screen. I have to admit that this bothered me. If a director wants to do an unconventional piece of storytelling, he should either have faith in the cinematic literacy of the audience or else he shouldn't bother. Gordon's decision to constantly tell the audience where he's going, both through the subtitles (i.e. "Chicago, 1973") and the editing marker of a burst of white light signaling flashes forward and back undermines his more intelligent efforts. The transitions in time are clunky and the film has a hard time segueing from romance to political thriller to tragedy to mystery. It's fine for a film to be a mix, but Waking the Dead feels like it's working too hard.
I'm not really sure where the currency is in this story that drew Gordon to it. The notion of a man haunted by both a literal spirit from his past and the metaphorical spirit of his lost ideals is hardly fresh and the story feels like it may have had more pep back in the mid-80s, when the shift of counter culture members to the political Right was more of a hot idea.
This being said, Gordon (who in my mind will always be the kid from Dressed to Kill) does excellent work with the actors in the film. This is especially true with Connelly, an actress who all too often finds herself cast for her curves and not enough for her acting muscle. Directors seem to get such a kick out of filming her body that they don't work with her performance. Gordon solves one of these problems by keeping Connelly in winter clothes for most of her performance. Rather than being the femme fatale, she's an Earth Mother. And it's a pleasant change. Sure she's beautiful and sexy, but she also has a lilting Southern accent (in most scenes) and a good screen presence.
I didn't put an "especially true" on Crudup's performance because I've simply come to expect very fine work from him. Crudup's film work began with him sleeping through performances in Sleeper and Inventing the Abbotts, but since then he's given one amazing performance after another, carrying films as diverse as the hugely underrated Without Limits and this year's triple crown of Jesus's Son, Almost Famous, and this film. His ability to deliver dialogue speaks to his theater background and he holds the screen remarkably well for a man who, as this movie visually emphasizes on several occasions, isn't of great stature. He's one of the best young actors working and this is an amazing showcase for him. As his character becomes more desperate and erratic, Crudup's performance just becomes better.
As I said, this film got better for me towards the end. However, there are huge patches where none of the scene transitions work at all. I'm giving it a 6/10, but I certainly think it has its rewards.