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Plot:
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 
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Recent Reviews
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MCT:January 18, 2008
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 exists 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. -
MCT:January 10, 2008
Nice premise, wonderful characters, excepcional performances, just wish they would have more background to what she/they/he stood for.
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MCT:December 6, 2007OK, 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 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. -
MCT:November 19, 2007I haven't seen it complete but I saw a part the other night on TV and it looked AMAZING! I have to see it... Cudrup + Connelly... what a delight!
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MCT:November 19, 2007I rented it for Conelly. Ended up hittin the old fast forward button so I could redeem my precious life lost.
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MCT:November 12, 2007a wonderfully acted tragedy about a politician whose realtionship with his republican girlfriend went sour and a few years later she dies tragically in acar accident. the story is about the man's journey into his own self discovery and about letting the woman he always been in love go so he can move on and is also helped by a vision of her ghost.
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MCT:October 10, 2007I'm pretty sure I've seen this, though I'm not sure I watched it beginning to end. It looks decent, but I just couldn't really get into it. Although I could watch Jennifer Connelly all day (and night), Billy CRudup has always been a hit-and-miss guy for me. Sometimes he's great, other times I think he's forcing it. In this one he's both.
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MCT:August 27, 2007
How did this movie get to be so...forgotten? I thought it was beautiful and powerful, with wonderful chemistry between Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly.
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MCT:July 25, 2007
it has some really nice things... things i think. o_o things that i don't really like to know that i think, actually.
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MCT:July 18, 2007sometimes when you love too much, you just don't know what's real anymore. stealing performances from billy crudup & jennifer connely
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MCT:June 17, 2007
This is the first movie where I saw Jennifer Connelly for what she was: One of the best actresses of our time. She brings smart, sexy, and soulful into every movie i've seen her in ... especially this one.
A REALLY great love story. -
MCT:June 11, 2007
It was good and just for 20 minutes i thought it was booring. But after 1 hour and 40 minutes i tought it was really okey. not better than CIS (like it stands at the fordral) but OK!
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MCT:February 18, 2007
this is a story of two people who r the very opposites of each other and fall in love...its nt a ghost movie but a very beautiful physicological thriller..
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MCT:January 14, 2007
Determines your "mushy factor." A half box of kleenex for me. A young Jennifer Connelly and Billy Crudup with Lori Carson's haunting song 'Snow Come Down" just put me away.
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MCT:October 2, 2006
An interesting concept and I love the fact that, even at the end of the film, Fielding's not sure whether Sarah is alive or just a figment of his imagination. It was extremely well acted by both Crudup and Connelly. The only thing that let it down for me was the dialogue - it quite often felt unnaturally pretentious to me.
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MCT:July 29, 2006
Reasonable script and performances, but it lacks excitement and intensity. It failed to draw me in enough to care about the outcome.
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MCT:May 9, 2006
Good film about trying to make an impact on the world and deciding what is the best way to do so and how the dead remind us about fighting for those that cannot fight for their causes.
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