Faulty 'Dead' a contrived effort

By Erin Podolsky

Daily Arts Writer

There's so much to like about Keith Gordon's "Waking The Dead" that it's a bit of a mystery as to what happened to suck it down. Or rather, there's one huge thing to like about "Waking The Dead," which unfortunately left a lot of necessary elements out in the cold.

Congressional candidate Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) sees dead people. Actually, make that singular: He sees a dead person, the love of his life, Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly, who starred with Crudup previously in "Inventing The Abbotts"), who lost her life in a car bombing while helping politically explosive Chilean nationals. Make no mistake, though: "Waking The Dead" isn't about to break any box office records, nor does it deserve to. But the relationship it draws between these two people, living and dead, is rendered with such tenderness and detail that there's never any question whether or not Fielding is wrong, or crazy, or able to move on. He is none of these, and he is a better person for it.

"Waking The Dead" veers into condescension once too often for comfort, though, losing credibility in the process as it takes audience stupidity for granted. The movie jumps back and forth in time from 1972-73 to 1982-83, covering Fielding and Sarah's love affair in the former and Fielding's self-destruction in the latter. There's nothing wrong with this - mixed up timelines are often effective, haunting tools. Or at least they are when the director recognizes the intelligence of his audience. Not so in "Waking The Dead" - every single time we move back or forward in time, Gordon pastes a cringe-inducing year title on the screen, apparently uncertain that the fade-to-whites between each time period are enough to clue us into the fact that we're in the past or the present. It's a small thing, but it's a symptom of a greater problem with the movie. Instead of taking us for granted, it takes us for simpletons. It's patronizing and infuriating in all the worst ways.

In addition to these petty-yet-important complaints, "Waking The Dead" has a larger problem in that by focusing so sharply and lovingly on Fielding and Sarah's relationship, it ignores the supporting characters. They take on the idiotic one-dimensionality that Gordon imagines in his audience. It's not such an awful thing for Gordon to mistake us for dimwits - after all, we're still people, flesh and blood. Gordon's characters, on the other hand, are not.

Isaac Green (Hal Holbrook), Fielding's political mentor pops in and out to give the boy a push in the right direction. Fielding's brother Danny (Paul Hipp) is the worst offender, a caricature of a hippie who has what has to be an early contender for worst subplot of the year, a love affair with a Korean prostitute (Sandra Oh, whose presence here is an utter mystery to anybody who has seen her work elsewhere) that is unsure whether to be played for laughs or tears. It's nothing but pain every time he's on the screen; at least Janet McTeer does a passable job in a nothing role as sister Caroline.

"Waking The Dead" suffers from nearly every dead lover cliché Hollywood has thrown at us over the years. It's to its credit that the relationship between Fielding and Sarah remains not just passable but extremely credible. Fielding's rise and fall are credible as well (Sarah pins him down with perfection when she points out that even though he comes from a working class family, his parents gave him an upper crusty moniker) - but just as God is in the details, so is entertainment. Perhaps Crudup and Connelly will work together a third time and finally get it right.

Courtesy of USA Films

Billy Crudup practices sensual frenology on Jennifer Connelly in "Waking the Dead."