Waking the Dead poster & wallpaper

Billy Crudup, Jennifer Connelly, Molly Parker

Actor-turned-director Keith Gordon has crafted a touching love story that transcends time, political ideology, and even death. The movie opens in 1974 as Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) watches a TV ne...( read more  read more... )ws report announcing the death in Chile of three American activists, including Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), his one true love. The story flashes back to when they first met, showing how he was always more conservative, with grand political aspirations, but the relationship worked because they both shared dreams of making the world a better place, one from inside the system and the other from outside. The movie also flashes forward to his life in the early '80s, when he gets tapped to run for Congress. He starts having visions of her, but he is never quite sure if she's a hallucination arising out of his stress, a manifestation of his political consciousness, an out-and-out ghost, or maybe she's still alive somehow. Whatever she is, his deep longing for her is making him crack up. Gordon smartly jumps the story back and forth in time, forgoing an "objective" reality in favor of a more subjective and emotional one. It is a structure based on memory, and that in tandem with the content is what makes Waking the Dead a very powerful film indeed.--Andy Spletzer

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81% liked it

4,207 ratings

Critics

52% liked it

52 critics

R, 106 min.

Directed by: Keith Gordon

Release Date: March 24, 2000

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DVD Release Date: September 26, 2000

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Flixster Reviews (277)

  • RiderOfTheStorms
    July 29, 2009
    RiderOfTheStorms
    fucking haunted movie with a great performance from billy
  • garebearsgirl
    September 6, 2008
    garebearsgirl
    A very touching love story that shows that love can transcend time. It is possible for two people so much for that to happen. This movie makes me cry every time. It just breaks my heart.
  • crackingdanio
    August 10, 2008
    crackingdanio
    It's the beginning of the 1980's and an up and coming politician, Fielding(Crudup), in the middle of his election run begins seeing his
    dead girlfriend(Connelly), so is Fielding going insane or is Sarah alive and it's all a conspiracy?
    Not your usual romantic drama, yes there...( read more)'s romance and drama, but also thrown into the picture is a bit of politics. Now don't let that put you off because 'Waking the dead' is one of those rare beauties in cinema, a tale of love lost and redemption(ya Hollywood is churning these out non stop, but this is different). Great acting, and if anything is going to make or break a film it's chemistry, no doubt about it here though because Connelly and Crudup are on fire, which makes the ending all the more upsetting.
  • ceWEBrity
    January 18, 2008
    ceWEBrity
    I loved the dichotomy of Waking the Dead's story right off the bat - part political flick, part romance, part ghost mystery? Interesting roots, but sadly the movie most often plays to its obvious avenues, and where there should have been atmosphere and melancholy there instead ex...( read more)ists cliche.

    The problem is that the crux of Waking the Dead, its love story, is the weakest part. Fielding and Sarah are good characters, but there's something missing - a lack of focus on the couple's good times, I think. They spend a lot of their time together locked in political repartee, which generally ends in some personal barb and all parties involved being pissed off or upset. They should just gone out for ice cream or roller bladed or something; you know, a tether to prove that these people ACTUALLY liked each other. Without it, the final moments of the movie kind of fall flat, and turns a movie that could have been genuinely affecting into something strong, if not forgettable.

    There's no denying that it is a strongly written movie, literate and full of governmental allegory. The lead performances are equally excellent, though Billy Crudup occasionally trips up on the admittedly dense dialogue. Unfortunately, it's just not enough - the movie spends too much time on Fielding's uninteresting campaign when it should be showing us more about the relationship that was taken away from him. Show us what he's missing.
  • FangsFirst
    December 6, 2007
    FangsFirst
    OK, so, I heard how fantastic Billy Crudup was in Jesus' Son, then in Stage Beauty. I saw him as Russell Hammond in Almost Famous and wasn't disappointed, but wasn't overly impressed either. Of course the reason for that, in my opinion, is that the film isn't...( read more) really about his character anyway. However, here, I was almost disturbed by how many actors I was reminded of as the movie went on--here's a rough list that I kept in my head as it went: Joaquin Phoenix, Sean Maher, Rob Lowe, Jimmy Smits,Tobey Maguire, Christian Bale, Skeet Ulrich. Each time it was primarily a physical reminder of the actor, but occasionally there was a behavioural or characteristic reminder. Smits' eyebrow-raising that symbolized his skeptical but essentially respectful listening, the eager, sort of nerdy hollowness of the attentive and bright Tobey Maguire (especially as Peter Parker or in Pleasantville), and the intense, dark, heavily browed look Joaquin can give in appropriate roles, the false charm of Bale as Patrick Bateman, the honest charm of Skeet Ulrich in the role for which I know him best--Paul Callan of Miracles.

    Anyway, I smelled a cold, spacious artsy drama when I saw the cover and read the title of this film--and when I saw the two stars, Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly. I am, as such, wary of films like this becuase they are almost always filled with talent, skill, interest and intelligence, but can succeed or fail depending on the attitude of the author and/or director. If he or she is self-important, pretentious and condescending, the entire film is often ruined. Here, thankfully, that is not the case.

    Fielding Pierce (Crudup) is watching a news report on television, announcing the carbombing of a Catholic activist group in Minneapolis, and then that this group includes one Sarah Williams (Connelly). He sobs and presses his hands to his forehead in confused, unconscious distress, angst and sadness. So, we begin the film knowing that Sarah has died. The year, we're told, is 1974. Suddenly, a fade to white reveals the date is 1972, and now we see Fielding in Coast Guard uniform, wandering into what is obviously not his element--a clear counterculture publishing office, playful confrontations with the workers, apparently going to see his brother Danny as publisher. Danny's secretary is none other than Sarah Williams, who we can tell as yet does not know Fielding. This, we find, is how they meet, and after a dinner dominated by Fielding's politics, philosophy and viewpoint, they have a date that evening in which she sarcastically suggests she will only agree to if allowed to talk.

    From here it is a clash; Fielding is a senator-to-be, hoping to gain and use political footing to improve the world and eventually become president and really shake up the system. Sarah is an activist with no interest in a government she sees as irredeemably corrupt, idealizing and admiring revolutionaries. Somehow, despite this, they fall clearly and obviously in love. They are fully aware of their conflicting interests--Fielding is in the Coast Guard, attending Harvard to try and get himself to his final goal, while Sarah is working through her Catholicism as an activist in a home for orphaned children. And so we begin to shift in time back and forth, first the 70s, then 1982, Fielding now being offered a chance at the position of Senator, Sarah still a memory. He begins to hear her voice, see signs of her presence and is unable to shake them or write them off. We see how deeply they were into each other's lives, and how difficult it was to reconcile their worlds. This difficulty of reconciliation comes back to haunt Fielding, emotionally and to some degree mentally unseating him.

    The supporting cast includes Jim Carroll Lynch, permanently ingrained in my brain as Steve Carey, transvestite brother of Drew Carey and wife of his nemesis Mimi, as Father Mileski, the priest who takes Sarah to Chile, as well as the great Hal Holbrook, known to us genre fans from John Carpenter's The Fog, George A. Romero's Creepshow, as Isaac Green, Fielding's political mentor, who maneouvres things behind the scenes to put things into motion for him and coaches him into finding the greatness he seeks from his working class roots.

    What I found most frustrating about this film, though, were the politics, viewpoints and ideology of Sarah. Connelly performs her perfectly, it should be noted, capturing exactly the smug, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, condescending, patronizing, tactless, uncontrolled attitude of the folk I've known of the more activist mindsets. I find them endlessly irritating despite agreeing with their goals and essential desires, which seems to be the feeling Fielding has of Sarah, outside the love he feels for her, much like her love for him is outside her distaste for his willingness to bend and hide his feelings from others to serve politics. However, she has no tact whatsoever and expresses venemous and profane distaste to a man whose article she has read when she meets him at a party Fielding is attending to build a reputation and name for himself. It was not charming, amusing or cheer-inspiring. She came off as disrespectful to the man she supposedly loves, petty, childish and immature. While her distaste for what he said was certainly justifiable, what point did it really serve to call him out like that and express her disgust with him so openly? Does that serve any real purpose? So, what, she can feel righteous in her condemnation of him and at least mildly sabotage her lover's lifelong work?

    Is she going to overthrow the U.S. government? If not, wouldn't it be good to have Fielding working to change it from the inside? This point is actually made later, in an inverse scene where Fielding is surrounded by Father Mileski, Sarah and the Chilean activists they have recently rescued. They speak ill of the church, inspiring no devastating comments from Mileski or Sarah, then tell Fielding, with sneers, that it is shocking that he would follow in the footsteps of the obviously corrupt existing politicians. He responds in clear frustration and feelings of being attacked by everyone--justifiable, I feel--that this is nonsensical, that just because he chooses that path does not mean he will be corrupted. Acting within the system is the only way to do something without changing the system itself. Fielding goes on to say that it must mean something that he, as a working class man, is ABLE to make himself into a Senator if he chooses, that, yes, it's a heavily flawed system with heavily flawed components, but that it has to be something that he can do that. Mileski makes the hideous remark that this sounds like a sick man using his symptoms to describe his health. Sarah points out this is an unfair and cold remark, but Fielding says this sounds like something Sarah would say, which leaves him alone in the conversation, she says. This is, while realistic, similarly unfair. From what we've seen, that's a completely accurate claim for him to make. She is always condescending to him and accuses him of horrible things consistently. While he isn't a perfect man by any stretch, he tends to at least be somewhat more respectful of her and her needs, dreams and interests.

    But, that's not what determines a film's worth or value. Just because it accurately portrays something I'm not a fan of does not make it flawed; if that portrayal is indeed accurate and instills this kind of reaction in me through its accuracy or representation, then it has achieved something. It may or may not be the intention, I suppose, but it comes off quite well in the end.
  • ahhh1989
    October 27, 2009
    ahhh1989
    The best romantic political allegory ever made. Extremely heartbreaking, but a must-see regardless.
  • saaaaaam
    August 6, 2009
    saaaaaam
    Heartbreaking movie. I got it on the video store today, but don't really know why it got my attention, still, I'm glad it did. Jennifer Connelly is awesome, as always. And what a love story...The translation to portuguese of the title is "Love bigger than life", which I found per...( read more)fect, for a change. Sarah belonged to Fielding, even if their lives were too distant, too different - their love was stronger.
  • writergirl79
    August 1, 2009
    writergirl79
    This film was heavy, that's for sure.
    I thought the nonlinear storyline was effective. Visually this film won me over. The imagery was starkly beautiful, lighting was used to great effect; sometimes to provide warmth at other times to make a room uncomfortably bright.
    It remi...( read more)nds me of the 'Constant Gardener', the version that would have unfolded if the man hadn't sought answers to his partner's death. What would've happened if he had tried to simply move on with his life.
  • timonthemeerkat
    April 13, 2009
    timonthemeerkat
    Beautiful love story greatly enhanced by both Connelly and Crudup.
  • ralch
    January 25, 2009
    ralch
    LETTERBOX. Extraordinaria. Una puesta en escena tan apasionada como las actuaciones de Billy Crudup y Jennifer Connelly. Una de esas películas que, aunque abiertas, dicen exactamente todo lo que tienen que decir con precisión casi perfecta. Pocas veces se ha retratado tan bien en...( read more) pantalla el amor entre dos personas. / Extraordinary. The mise en scene is as passionate as the performances of Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly. One of those movies that, although open-ended, say everything they need to say with almost perfect precision. Love between two people has seldom been so well presented on screen.

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Critic Reviews

January 1, 2000
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

When we invest emotional capital, we deserve a payoff. full review

January 1, 2000
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

A film teeming with riches. full review

January 1, 2000
Roger Ebert, At the Movies

When we invest emotional capital, we deserve a payoff. full review

View more Waking the Dead reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

  • rabidwombat22
    January 16, 2009
    rabidwombat22
    A movie about liberals? This SUCKED! I love Jennifer Connelly but man she chose a bad one. If people die, heres some good advice: MOVE ON!
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  • What actor appeared in Back to School (1986) and later went on to become a respected director whose titles include A Midnight Clear, Waking the Dead and The Singing Detective?  Answer »
  • In Casino Royale (2006): during the airport scene - in the background there's a TV showing a French news report... the actress playing the reporter is a regular in which TV show?  Answer »
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