Tonight I rented the movie The Dying Gaul and I figured I'd give you all a review since its been a while since I've done one.
"If they don't enter the theater, they don't get a chance to leave." This is a line that Jeffrey (Campbell Scott) gives to stuggling screenwriter Robert (Peter Sarsgaard) while trying to convice him to change the characters in his screen play from Homosexual to Heterosexual. At first glace this movie only appears to be about just that, a sneaky hollywood producer toying with the script of a down on his luck screenwriter. But the movie soon takes many twists and turns when Robert ends up in Jeffrey's bed, and Jeffrey's wife Elaine (Patricia Clarkson) Soon begins to unravel their secrets.
The movie for the most part isn't all that bad with smartly written dialouge, and ever weaving webs of lies, but parts of it are left unexplained leaving much to be desired. For instance how does the wife find out everything that she does about the realationship between her husband and Robert?
This movie being one that does feature the lives of gay men seems like they wanted to push the limits but became scared of the consequences. They begin to show the gay relationships in the movie, but soon backout and settle for mainly talking about it not showing anything. They wanted to be daring but did not go far enough to be considered daring.
Throughout the movie I did find some very intruiging cinamatography, that really helped with the flow of the movie. As did the simplistic settings, which did not tear focus from the actors themselves. In the movie they used a lot of voice over, which at times worked and made sense but at one point they had two voice overs going at the same time saying the same thing making it impossible to know what they were saying. The biggest technical problem I had with this movie was the music. It seemed to be playing constantly through the movie and most of the time it was over powering and distracting from the characters. It also did not seem to match the mood of the movie at times and it pulled me out from what was happening.
When the movie finally reached its end after only an hour and a half it seemed like it had been rushed. The ending wrapped up way to quickly, and nothing in the story was resolved. The end left me wishing they had taken a few moments to think of something better. It was not so much a problem with what happened in the end it was the delivery of what happened.
Overall I did really like this movie and I would reccomend it. I feel Craig Lucas did a good job in his directorial debute.
Current Mood: 
complacent