Wake

Brilliant feels inadequate to describe this film. It is beautifully filmed, superbly edited, and amazingly acted.

Basically, it's a film focusing on four brothers, with a shared history of alcoholism and abuse, inflicted upon them, and by them, and their unexpected coming together for a night of celebration, freedom, and finality, that quickly turns on it's heel. Gale Harold and Blake Gibbons will take your breathe away. As raw and intense as it is, there is still plenty of humor, though at first, you'll be hesitant to laugh, but do, because there is plenty to laugh at. When Jack says "what's the difference between pink and purple? The grip!" It really is okay to exhale, and laugh.... It's a real film that doesn't end with some pretty satin bow at the end, but makes you think, and makes you want to see it over and over again....

The reason I went to see Wake was because of Gale Harold, who gives a superbly credible performance here as Kyle, one of the four Riven brothers who reunite for one long night of insane plotting and torturous reminiscing, culminating in disaster (as these nights always do). What sets this film apart from other dysfunctional family reunion rehashes is how realistic it feels -- you genuinely get the sense that these four wrecks actually share history, which is very hard to depict - most writers wind up over-stating the facts to let the audience in on it, but first-time screenwriter Henry LeRoy Finch manages to convey their shared anguish without doing this -- he tells us just enough, relying on mood and the actions of the characters to fill in the rest.

I saw the movie at the Queens International Film Festival. I thought it was excellent - atmospheric, beautifully photographed (though the digital projection at the festival was a bit dark), well edited, superbly acted across the board, and (this was an added bonus) well scored. The movie begins with Landau's voiceover (we see him as he types) writing a story of the flashback events. I must say, the prose in his bookend scenes was a bit flowery, and even contained an obvious pronoun error (in fact, I believe there's a moment in later dialogue when Blake Gibbons's grammar is corrected by Dihlon McManne, and McManne - the younger version of Landau - is wrong then too). Finch's script was much better in the the more important departments of dialogue, character, plot, pacing, etc., where it was truly fine.

The premise is that one of four brothers, an escaped con (Raymond), has chosen the family house to rendezvous with his accomplice brother Jack (who brings along a couple of party girls for the road) and abscond with some ill-gotten money. They happen to arrive on the night that the eldest - Sebastian - plans to euthanise their cancer-ridden mother with drugs he has persuaded the youngest brother Kyle to supply. All the acting was wonderful (and it helped that the parts were uniformly wonderful). The characters were each dysfunctional in different ways. The brother who has stayed with the mother to hold it all together (Dihlon McManne) is a weakling; Jack (John Philbrick) is an amoral, sadistic loser; Raymond (Blake Gibbons) is caught between good and evil, a cunning but stupid con man with both a genuine family affection and a sadistic, controlling, larcenous streak.

Kyle, the youngest (Gale Harold) is really the strongest of the four (he has quit alcohol and drugs and holds a job), and the best (he never quite gets away from his best instincts, whatever the provocation). He's also the most damaged (Raymond comes in second). He is haunted by the horrific family past, and he take prescription drugs - apparently to deal with some form of schizophrenia. As the haunted one, he experiences terrible flashbacks brought on by the appearance of Raymond and Jack. It's a very dark film, but very compelling. You have to pay attention to it, and that makes it a real moviegoing experience, where the dark theatre and absence of distractions keep you intent on it. I would really recommend that your first exposure to it be in a theatre rather than on TV or a DVD (unless you watch the DVD on your hard drive from your computer chair).

I want to mention finally that the music by Henry LeRoy Finch and Chris Anderson is very good and atmospheric, and that it is augmented by some original songs by a folksinger/songwriter named Ramsey Midwood, with whom I am not familiar. I have made a note to myself to look for an album of his, because the songs were terrific. Very literate folk songs, a bit like Tom Waits's stuff. I have only one quibble, apart from the flowery prose of the elder Sebastian (McManne/Landau), which is that I didn't need the early exteriors of Raymond and Kyle on their way to the house. I already knew the brothers were coming, and it would have been better to see McManne going about his routine, and get more of a sense of how isolated he was there with the uncommunicative, dying mother. However, the footage of Gale Harold tearing down wooded roads on his motorcycle is something some of you may be glad to see.

How is Gale Harold? Excellent technically, as is everybody - especially Blake Gibbons - but he brings to it all the depth and complexity he brings to everything else. And though he's a mess, and gets messier, there just isn't any way to keep him from being beautiful. And that works for the script, because Kyle has a goodness that none of this ghastly family has ever quite been able to kill, and that at least two of his brothers recognize and, in their own ways, cherish. John Philbrick's Jack is the most unredeemed and unsympathetic, but not the scariest. That's Blake Gibbons's Raymond, who is alternately scary, appalling, and strangely sympathetic. I don't agree with the previous contributor that the Raymond character ought to have been the center of the film, however. He's interesting at all times, but Gale Harold's character is one of those doomed angels - deeply damaged by past events that Blake Gibbons's Raymond doesn't even seem to remember very well. And Harold is simply hypnotic in the part.

I love a great independent, and I love Hollywood legends. Put them together and I am one happy film-goer. This film had both, the independent feel, and one of Hollywood's most recognizable face: Martin Landau. Instead of getting to heavy, not a bad little movie about the Riven brothers and their multitude of dysfunction. The cast is well ensambled, many faces I recognize from various television and indie works. Gale Harold, whos fans swooned quite loudly during the flick, was a convincing Kyle. Though the character lacked much in the way of bite. Emotionally troubled characters take time to flush out, and the time just wasn't here for a character I believe the writer's falsely made the focus of the story. More interesting and impressive was Blake Gibbons, as a stern (if that's even the right word!) Raymond Riven. Something very dynamic about the way Gibbons handled the various scenes. It's not a sex appeal (though he is quite attractive). It's not intensity (he had it at times). It's just seemed natural. He became Raymond. Just overall impressive. Not a bad flick, but not one I would overly recommend. Some wonderful moments for these actors and not a bad storyline. See it if your a straight girl with Showtime, between the ages of 15 and 50, who thinks Mr. Harold is a cinema star because you can see him naked each week on "Queer As Folk". Otherwise, I have plenty of other independents I can easily recommend if your looking for something worthwhile.

Dark, intense, brooding, with a little black humour. I liked this for the way it left so many things ambiguous, and didn't feel the need to spell everything out. We get just enough backstory to understand the gist of the brothers' issues with each other and their past. As the audience, we're left to put things together in a way that works for us, which is challenging without being frustrated. The dark underlying tension between the brothers feels menacing, but the dysfunction, shared history, and unresolved issues are universal for anyone with siblings or a family. This is Gale Harold's best non-QAF work. He and Blake Gibbons both shine as two brothers who are polar opposites, or perhaps the complementary yin and yang of this particular unhappy family.