All Good Things

Let me begin with the acting. Very strong and good acting from all the major players on this film. Something you could expect, when you read the cast list. The story is decent too, but you might feel there is something missing (or maybe it was just me). Especially if you have seen similar movies.

The story evolves more or less linear (so you probably will be able to spot where this is heading), so it will mostly depend on your view on the subject and how much you like the actors in it. Again I liked both, but I think there is something missing, that I cannot really put my finger on, but I can feel it's absence. I know it sounds abstract, but I can still recommend the movie nevertheless

Greetings again from the darkness. Who among us isn't intrigued by a real life "unsolved" murder mystery? Throw in a very wealthy New York real estate family, a never-discovered body, an executed friend, and a horrible childhood trauma and it is certain to draw the attention of filmmaker Andrew Jarecki. Jarecki's film "Capturing the Friedmans" won numerous awards and is among the best documentaries ever made. He has a knack with dark family secrets.

In the film, Ryan Gosling plays David Marks, disenchanted son of Real Estate mogul Sanford Marks (a powerful Frank Langella), who witnessed the grisly suicide of his mother when he was very young. David meets the energetic and affectionate Katie (Kirsten Dunst) and the two dreamers escape Daddy's clutches and head to Vermont to open a health food store. Finally wilting under pressure from Sanford, the couple returns to the city and David joins the family business. The good things are soon to end.

Since much of the real life story is still a mystery, Jarecki does a nice job in assembling pieces from the trial records. Along the way, we meet David's friend Deborah Lehrman (Lilly Rabe), an acclaimed writer who seems to always be there for David ... as he is for her. We witness the transformation of David from loving husband to mentally disturbed murder suspect.

Jarecki gives us some guidance on what might have happened and how the plan could have been executed, but we'll never know for sure. What we do know is that there was not much happiness associated with this family, despite the wealth and 42nd Street real estate holdings.

The acting in the film is tremendous. Gosling, Dunst and Langella are top notch. Yes, Ms. Dunst provides what is easily her best screen performance ever. Support work from Lily Rabe, Phillip Baker Hall, Nick Offerman and Kristen Wiig is all strong and believable. This one will give you the creeps ... and rightly so.

In All Good Things, the director/writer has created a plausible fiction to account for a series of actual crimes. The evolution of the supposed killer from carefree youth to malignant immoralist is depicted, step by step. The strength of the movie as a story lies in its focus on a web of characters and their relationships to one another, rather than on the crimes themselves. We never see actual violence, but only its effects on characters, and their subsequent efforts to conceal the truth, to escape from their situation, or to satisfy some personal need. The movie functions mainly as a kind of indictment, and I wonder if it would work were it not for the 'documentary' angle, the movie as crusader for the truth, bringing to light the possible culpability of a real person, abetted by certain friends and family, a man as yet unpunished.

The motivations of this character, the object of the indictment, are accounted for in the course of the story, as various traumatic and painful incidents from his life are shown or recalled, and by allusions to deviant mental conditions or sexual preferences that are not. Whether these revelations are served up clearly or merely hinted at, they somehow fail collectively to satisfy as explanations for the barbarism that emerges as the story proceeds. At the end, the inner life of the putative killer remains obscure, a source of dissatisfaction for a movie that is about character.

So, not a great movie, but an engrossing entertainment if you are in the mood for a dark story that leaves you wondering how closely real events in fact matched up to this clever reconstruction.

The stage curtains open ...

"What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

Since the release of this film in 2010, more light has been shed on the Robert Durst case (on which this film was based upon). The above quote was taken from the final moments in the final episode of an HBO Documentary called, "The Jinx", where Durst allowed himself to be interviewed and then seemingly, in the bathroom afterwards, forgot he was wearing a mic and unintentionally confessed to the murders. BUT, my review is for this movie, "All Good Things".

Ryan Gosling plays the part of David Marks (Robert Durst) and Kirsten Dunst as his wife Katie (Kathleen McCormick) as we begin when they first meet in New York in 1971. David witnessed his mother's suicidal death as a young boy and he was never the same since, impacting nearly everything and everyone that would later be a part of his life. He and Katie marry and start a new life running a house food store in Vermont called "All Good Things". Things are good until David feels the heavy pressure of his overbearing, wealthy father come down on him for not providing his wife a better life, and then later when she wants to start a family, he is deadset against it. If you know the story of the Durst's, then you know how this eventually ends up.

This was an entertaining movie with very good, strong performances by both Gosling and Dunst. Most especially by Kirsten Dunst, who was nothing short of mesmerizing in her role as the ill-fated wife. Despite the good acting though, the overall effect of the film was just "okay". By movie's end, they make it appear that he had managed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes even though everything else around hims shouts "suspicion"! How prophetic it turned out to be.

I did enjoy the movie, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. It is worth a one-time watch, and it is enough to stir your curiosity into looking up the real story and finding out the facts. I would recommend watching "The Jinx" over this, as it held my attention much more. This is 6 stars out of 10.

This is not a bad movie at all, but you should watch the documentary "The Jinx" and get the true story. I didn't connect the two untill I watch this movie the second time, but this is made over the life and story of Robert Durst.

Both Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst play their roles very well, and there is an evil vibe to the movie - it never really shows any dull moments. Andrew Jarecki did a good job directing this, but a much better job directing "The Jinx", and the tension is so much better and much scarier. And of course have a huge flip side - but enough of that here ;-) Watch it instead!