The Dying Gaul

I just saw this at the Seattle Film Festival, Peter Saarsgard was there to answer questions. The movie is extremely watchable for the first half of the way through, is built on a fascinating premise with interesting characters (a bisexual movie producer and his wife who reside in a Lifestyles of the Rich And Famous type beachside modern mansion, a young gay writer whose lover has died of AIDS), and builds to a pitch of extreme suspense. After that, however, the plot stumbles and the film's conclusion turns on a series of unbelievable events. I thought since the movie was based on a play, the plot would be clear, but it's almost as if the movie version was forced to cut out some important sequences, as there is never quite enough information about 1) how the woman obtains all her inside information on the writer, 2) how the writer's ex-wife was related to the characters and 3) most importantly, what happens to the characters at the end of the movie.

I went into the bathroom after the movie and joined a lineup of women who were also asking each, "What exactly happened there?" --- when it's not clear it's a sign of unclear movie-making.

First off, the less you know about this movie before seeing it, the better. Go in clean. And just let it such you in. Here are a few things you CAN know. (a) The screenwriter/director, Craig Lucas, is gay but wrote his best known play, PRELUDE TO A KISS, about a straight relationship that has overtones of homosexuality. (b) Patricia Clarkson may be the finest actress of her age. She flits around the first 20 minutes of this movie in a bra and panties, toyingly svelt but with a panther-like quality you only realize later. (c) This is a movie without a protagonist or an antagonist -- or more accurate, a movie in which each of the main characters take turns at being the antagonist and protagonist. (d) Despite the gay aspects, this is really a movie about betrayal, and it is fiendishly mean (but in a good way). (e) Peter Sarsgaard has never looked handsomer. (f) That's all you need to know. See it.

Hollywood is always a sinister setting, even for a comedy and "The Dying Gaul" is no exception. I don't intend to divulge the ins and outs of the story because that should be your job, but I feel compelled to talk about it because it kind of stacked all over me like some kind of alien jelly. I always loved Campbell Scott and I suspect I always will. He plays the devil - The "I'll give you a million bucks if you abandon completely yourself, your principles, your loyalties" - kind of devil - He is married to the splendid Patricia Clarkson ( part Meryl Streep part Wayland Flower's Madame) and the object of his temptation is Peter Sarsgaard, one of the best creepiest actors ever to appear on film. It may be a personal thing but he gives me the willies. The film is an uncomfortable journey through a strangely familiar landscape that becomes darker and darker. I will take my chances and recommend it.

"The Dying Gaul" feels like an updated "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" set in Hollywood instead of academia. But it gradually veers towards "Fatal Attraction" as the opening jabs at commercial film-making, with lots of name and title dropping that seem to be writer Craig Lucas's revenge on compromises he made for his successful "Prelude to a Kiss," give way to catastrophic psychological manipulation.

The initial Hollywood commentary is emphasized through the settings, as the movie producer, Campbell Scott, and his ex-writer/liberal activist/household and children manager wife, Patricia Clarkson, live in an extraordinary house with a rippling pool and ocean view. Their financial success is wielded like a weapon as the camera restlessly swoops around all their possessions, household help and scenic property. The emotional price he's paid for this is clear as Scott's "Jeffrey" could be in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (to drop film titles like he does) as he'll clearly do anything to seal a deal.

Peter Sarsgaard drives on to the studio lot and into their lives with a completely different character from his four other released films this year, with inflections and body language that only occasionally get a bit too flamboyant as affectations of an out gay writer discussing issues of sexuality in the movies and his late lover. His grief and need for human warmth is so palpable that it is even believable that after failing with psychological counseling and Buddhism to deal with it, he clutches at what used to be called spiritualism, here delivered through the internet, shown visually both in the written word and the actors talking to the camera like reading aloud from their computer screens, edited effectively in the best key scenes with real life.

Clarkson is wonderful as she morphs from busy housewife lounging in a fetching bikini, to curious dabbler in the dark side, to woman scorned and revengeful manipulator. She may be the Ultimate Scary Mother, sexy, maternal and controlling, who while distraught over violent video games goes after the psyche. Unusually for how such a triangle has been portrayed in films (and the film is specifically set in 1995 as perhaps a more innocent time), we also get brief, sympathetic insight on another woman similarly affected by the writer's selfish actions that puts Clarkson's "Elaine" in perspective as she could have been portrayed as more of a brittle harpy. But each character alternately attracts and repels us.

In his directing debut Lucas does not well serve his own script, adapted from his play, as it could have been a lot tauter in exploring the slippery slope of ethics in human relationships, that all it takes is that one small step to deceive or keep secrets before one falls into the well. There could have been a lot fewer arty scenes in silhouette, at sunset, across water.

The Steve Reich music throughout becomes more irritating than tension-inducing.

While the title has something to do with the writer's long monologue about the significance of the Roman sculpture as an artist's way to make victims sympathetic, one is left here more with the feeling that these three folks deserve each other, though the collateral damage left in their wake is a tragedy.

Somehow, this movie managed to hold my interest despite the fact that I never really cared about the characters or what was going to happen to them next. It's not a love story. Not a very good relationship tale. Not a mystery or thriller. Instead, Dying Gaul is a modern day Greek tragedy that uses Hollywood and homosexuality as simply vehicles to generate interest.

This is Craig Lucas' first time in the director's chair. He wrote The Secret Lives of Dentists (previously at Sundance, starring Patricia Clarkson). The movies tackle the same themes---the value and meaning of marriage, the impact of dalliances, the complexities of finding happiness and satisfaction without veering from tradition. But Dying Gaul comes at it with a different … orientation, and even outcome.

Patricia Clarkson is always excellent, but here she shows a little evil in her character, which is outside her normal range. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast comes off as wooden, certainly uninspired. Pay attention, because there are liberal doses of philosophy in the form of quotes and counsel. But the real tragedy here is the lack of a meaningful story or compelling characters.