Customer Reviews

The Dying Gaul

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I managed to get a "For Review Only" dvd of this movie. My initial interest in it was because Peter Sarsgaard was part of the ensemble. Anything he does will at least merit a stellar performance from him. Best case scenario is that the other players also live up to his standards. In "The Dying Gaul" Clarkson, Scott and Sarsgaard are equally matched in talent. They inhabit these characters so well it gives the sometimes 'unbelievable' storyline enough validity to allow the viewer to want to accept the circumstances, so you can follow the maze of their deeds to the finale without cynicism. It works. You eventually get to see these characters in a raw state, emotionally skewered and acting out in ways that don't happen in 'normal' circumstances. Sarsgaard especially is delightful to watch in his metamorphosis. His is the most emotive part. A big change from his understated role in "Shattered Glass." Scott's character has lived with part of himself hidden away all his life and Clarkson's character must hide the story defining secret she accidently stumbles upon, for most of the movie.
The odd title (Dying Gaul) is well explained at the beginning and has a broader role overall in the movie than at first glance. Pay close attention to the description of the sculpture it refers to. I think it ends up explaining Lucas' empathy for his characters at their best and at their worst.
Something I don't recall reading in any reviews of this movie is that at the end it seems as if Scott's character ends up eerily striking about the same pose as the Dying Gaul sculpture. Another thing to look for.
This is an interesting story and the visuals are great. What really seals the deal on this film overall is the excellent actors. Just to see those three in action is worth the price of admission.

regards,
Laurie

THE DYING GAUL, written and directed by Craig Lucas (writing credits include 'Longtime Companion', 'Prelude to a Kiss', 'Reckless') is a brilliant little film that stirred comment and appreciation during its unfortunately very brief run in the theaters (as one of the film's characters comments "Most Americans hate gay people. If they hear it's about gay people, they won't go.") And this in a year when films such as 'Brokeback Mountain', 'Transamerica', and 'Capote' drew focus. As the oft used phrase states, 'Go figure'.

The story is a bizarre triangle of interaction among three very bright, enlightened, yet passionately isolated people whose coming together is the stuff of tragedy on the grand scale. Robert Sandrich (Peter Sarsgaard) is a grieving screenwriter (his lover recently died from complications of AIDS in a manner secretly gnawing at Robert). His most recent screenplay 'The Dying Gaul' about a gay couple - one with AIDS - is a tribute to his lover, and while it is a brilliant script and is taken on by a top film producer Jeffrey Tishop (Campbell Scott), Jeffrey offers to buy the script for a million dollars IF Robert re-writes the script to make the couple a heterosexual one (see above for his reason). Robert at first refuses to 'sell out' but eventually gives in and does the re-write. Jeffrey is married to a very bright ex-screenwriter Elaine (Patricia Clarkson) who reads Robert's script, loves the original and becomes so obsessed with the script and with Robert that she plunges into an investigation of Robert's life. Compounding the intrigue is the fact that Jeffrey begins to fall in love with Robert and Robert is so needy emotionally that he responds: the two become lovers. Elaine enters Robert's private life via chat room discussion where she poses as the voice of Robert's dead lover and inadvertently discovers secrets that eventually bring the trio to a devastating climax: secrets are revealed that demand accountability and each character is permanently altered.

Craig Lucas, in this his first directorial outing, proves to be an artist with style, with vision, and with guts to put tough material into visual form. The pacing is tense; the ideas are well developed from the meaning of the title to the cruelty of the machine mode means of conversation via email chat rooms. He handles sexuality variations as well as any director today. He of course is blessed with a trio of superlative actors: Sarsgaard, Clarkson and Campbell give extraordinary performances. The cinematography by Bobby Bukowski revels in the brilliance of the California sun at poolside as well as the eerie light from the computer screen in darkened rooms - further underlining the alienation that medium demands. And the crowning addition is a musical score by gifted composer Steve Reich (one of the finest of today's classical composers). THE DYING GAUL is a tough film but one that is so refreshingly dedicated to its vision that it scores as a major work. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, March 06

A trio of superb performances ignites writer-director Craig Lucas's 2005 bludgeoning psychological thriller set in the deal-making, Machiavellian world of Hollywood filmmaking circa 1995. The plot focuses on an unconventional triangle - Robert is a young screenwriter who gets summoned to a meeting with Jeffrey, a powerful studio executive, who is very interested in adapting Robert's script into a movie. There's one catch - the script is a tribute to Robert's partner, who died recently of AIDS after going through painful medical treatments, and Jeffrey wants to change the story to a heterosexual love story to assure the movie has wider commercial appeal. With an offer of a million dollars upfront for the script, Robert begrudgingly accepts the change, but then he meets Jeffrey's wife, Elaine, who becomes drawn to Robert through his deeply felt script. Her attraction is platonic but increasingly obsessive. At the same time, Robert and Jeffrey become lovers, and the plot dives headlong into intriguing twists relating to Internet chat rooms and layering deceptions that lead to a fatalistic conclusion.

Once again proving to be one of our most audacious actors, Peter Sarsgaard brings a fearlessly fey quality to Robert that allows his character to harden as the encroaching deceptions envelop him. Looking very much the part of the patrician, artistically frustrated Hollywood wife, Patricia Clarkson gives her typically sharp, insightful performance as Elaine especially as her efforts to manipulate Robert backfire into her own unfolding, painful situation. What she does very well is show the vulnerability of her character regardless of her misogynistic intentions. With his stentorian voice used in an ideal context, Campbell Scott finally shows some of the fire of his late parents (George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst) in exposing the deviously powerful character of Jeffrey ultimately rendered powerless by the circumstances.

Although the movie takes advantage of Los Angeles locations, including a stunning hilltop home (complete with infinity pool, of course), it still feels very much like a play especially in Lucas's use of talking headshots and voiceovers to amplify the ennui of the chat room activity. Where the film goes somewhat awry is the series of developments in the last half-hour that lead to the ending where Robert's sense of paranoia brings certain facts to light and responses become increasingly contrived. Regardless, Lucas's gift for smart dialogue and the three performances lend credence to the wildly implausible developments. With the hoopla over the wondrous "Brokeback Mountain" (which I just saw), it will be interesting to see if Jeffrey's mercenary comments about the box-office poison of gay-themed films will remain true.

WOW! This film is what Alfred Hitchcock would have been making today. It's as dark and edgy as any Hitchcock film, but even more so - it's as if Hitchcock himself were on acid direccting this...by far the best suspense thriller I have seen in a while. The screenplay and direcction are incredible and you are going to be on the edge of your seat at the end of this film, because just as soon as you beccome sympathetic to one charater, they do something so heinous that by the end of the film, there is no one to really empanthize with. All of the actors give outstanding performances, the cinematography is compelling - as it should be in a suspenseful film: very good use of day/night paralelling the evil/good each character presents. A MUST HAVE for any film collector.

Straight to DVD for the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. It was good. Though the premise - a recently bereaved gay screenwriter (Sarsgaard) sells his first screenplay to a married Hollywood executive (Scott), with whom he then starts an affair - is intriguing enough, the film lacks punch and too often betrays its origins as the director's own stage play.
Having said that, our cinemas are stuffed with Hollywood product far less interesting and elegantly written than this, and all three lead actors are thoroughly believable. Clarkson is particularly strong as the betrayed wife who assumes a male online identity to uncover the truth about her husband's bisexuality, but any potential for suspense fizzles out disappointingly.

This movie might be seen as a cautionary tale about the dangers of selling out - but message or no message, it is in any case a hauntingly beautiful tragedy. As in one of Shakespeare's, the intensity of the characters' emotions, and the veracity of their psychology make their march towards their ends seem not just thoroughly plausible, but inexorable. No one is really bad, no one is wholly good, but a combination of character flaws and circumstances leads to great misfortune.

All of the three main actors are at their very best, creating fervent character studies. Apart from everything else this movie has to offer, it affords the audience a chance to see the rising star Peter Sarsgaard in a role with more dimensions to it than the ones he has in Flightplan or The Skeleton Key.

Don't be fooled by the hesitations in Bret Fetzer's editorial review above. See the one in The New York Times for a much more perceptive analysis of this gem of a movie.

The uneasy alliance between commerce, art, lust and love lies at the heart of Craig Lucas's mordantly pessimistic The Dying Gaul. Featuring three totally unsympathetic characters that viewers will love to hate, this movie is about what happens when people choose money and desire over artistic integrity, and ultimately sells out for the greater dollar.

Robert (Peter Sarsgaard) is trying to sell his script of The Dying Gaul. It's a tragic love story; a semi-autobiographical tale about AIDS based on his relationship with his now-dead agent and partner Malcolm (Bill Camp). Jeffrey (Campbell Scott) is a suave and slick bottom line-driven producer interested in Robert's (Peter Sarsgaard) script. But to make the project commercially viable, Jeffrey demands that Robert change the central couple from a homosexual to heterosexual duo.

Robert is initially appalled that Robert would suggest such a thing, but Robert lays it on the line, saying that Americans won't go to see a movie about g*y people, and that "America hates g*y people." Jettisoning his integrity, Robert eventually sells out and does as Jeffrey asks, in the process pocketing $1 million and establishing an intimate friendship with Jeffrey and his failed screenwriter and bored wife Elaine (Patricia Clarkson), whose spends most of her life in her multi-million dollar, palatial modernist home.

Whilst Robert attends glamorous industry luncheons put on by the wealthy couple, Jeffrey begins to put the moves on the young screenwriter. And after learning that Robert frequents chat rooms, Elaine strikes up an in-disguise online conversation with her new friend and makes a devastating discovery, igniting a desire for retribution, and leading to a dangerous game of cyberspace cat-and-mouse in which Elaine poses as the back-from-the-dead spirit of Malcolm.

As the three-way friendship begins to collapse in on itself, the less than savory personalities come to the forefront, highlighting their penchant for lies and duplicity. Mr. Lucas and his director of photography, Bobby Bukowski, create stark compositions of cool blue and hot red light, the ice and fire that lurk within the characters. His protagonists make some tough, sad choices, their façade of moneyed contentment shattered by their manipulative and calculating games.

The acting is superlative, with Scott, Clarkson and Sarsgaard turning in tour de force performances as the embattled trio. Sarsgaard is touching and fully engaged, Scott is astonishingly duplicitous playing a man of power, influence and a happy-go-lucky lack of conscience; and as Elaine, Clarkson makes every glimmer of sympathy, doubt and steely resolve register.

The Dying Gaul offers no easy answers on the problems of compromised principles, the price of greed and the closeted nature of Hollywood, and in fact sometimes the movie may be a little too complicated and heavy handed for its own good. But as the tragic climax comes, and the characters reach their final denouement, we see that people will ultimately do crazy things when afflicted by loss, betrayal and rage. Mike Leonard March 06.

I came to this page struggling with how to encapsulate my take on 'Dying Gaul,' but I see that amazon reviewer Josh Lanyon has nailed it perfectly: "The actors were brilliant and the thing is so beautifully shot--the music, mood, the little touches--all great. And all rather beside the point."

Exactly. Patricia Clarkson, Campbell Scott, Peter Sarsgaard are all spectacular here. I thought Scott was the standout. And, the movie looks incredible. But the dark mood of the movie got darker and darker...and simply less likable. By the end, you won't care for any of the three protagonists. I watched the movie with two other people. None of us liked the ending...nor did it matter by that point. We just wanted it to end. We were intrigued by the presence of an 'alternate ending' on the DVD. It's basically the same ending, but it goes on a bit longer and only confirms that the ambiguity of the released ending was intended (one character expresses the ambiguity in a voice over).

i really was not sure what to expect with this movie, a friend of mine told me that it was really good, yet i still had little preconception going into it. i really love peter sarsgaard and patricia clarkson, to me they are great actor/actress. sarsgaard plays the grieving lover of and aids victim and out of grief comes his excellent script. campbell scott wants to make it but change it at the same time. the two bond and become friends in more ways than one. sarsgaard meets clarkson the wife of campbell and the odd love triangle is complete. she is fascinated with sarsgaard and the two become close, no sex though. keep in mind that this movie is set in 1995 and the advent of the chat room is still relatively new. she uses the chat room as a way of extracting info from sarsgaard that he generally would not reveal outright. in the end she received more information than she bargained for. now let me say that in general i like women except when they let their manipulation turn evil. and in this movie clarkson is so evil, however, is her evil deserved? yes and no. she punishes for the injustice done to her by the two men, but the way she does it is pure evil. pretending to be the dead lover and getting a psychologically unstable sarsgaard to believe it is simply sadistic. i love the way that sarsgaard portrays his emotional instability. you can see it on display in an intimate moment with scott, you can see it when he talks to the mother of his child, you can see it when he is conflicted between what to do at the end of the movie. was his revenge on clarkson justified? yes and no. she played the one thing against him that would hurt and injure the most. it is the ultimate slap in the face to me it was the lowest that you could go. should he have gone as far as he did, no there was colateral damage that was unnecessary. did scott get what he deserved? yes and no. did he deserve to lose his family yes he did, he was willing to put his family in jeopardy for an affair and he got busted. did he deserve to lose his family in the way they were lost, no, no one should lose people that way. this is such an intertwining drama that i feel it is almost shakespearean. the drama, coincidence, the cause and effect, simply put the humanity of it all. kharma is mentioned in the movie and is a core theme to the movie, be careful what you do it will come back and kick you in the but. i really like the movie, to me it is written very intelligently with very little excess or underdeveloped points. all the actors turn in great performances and fill out the characters perfectly. see it, it is worth the time and the effort, better than a lot of dramas that have come out lately.

For about three quarters of the this movie I was quite literally spellbound. Beautifully acted, beautifully shot, subtle and intelligent---how the hell is this guy going to pull this off, I wondered as the plot twisted and turned into what promised to be a riveting denouement.

Simple answer: he didn't. Writer/Director Lucas painted himself into a corner--then tried to walk out of it, slipped on the wet paint, and slid across the room in a startling pratfall.

I...laughed.

I burst out laughing at the ending. It's such calculated, pretentious nonsense. And it's all in the writing. The actors were brilliant and the thing is so beautifully shot--the music, mood, the little touches--all great. And all rather beside the point.

Whatever it was supposed to be.