wc1996-428-366101 This glossy, slick Hollywood homage to artsy-fartsy films is as hollow as a drum. It falls apart virtually in the beginning when the studio head asks the struggling writer who his agent is! Please! How did struggling writer's script even get into studio's heads office? Craig Lucas, the guy behind this pointless tripe, was abandoned at birth and found in a car in a parking lot in Atlanta, Georgia. Well, gee whiz, no wonder this film is such a mess - what infant could overcome such an horrific entre into the world? Everything about this film is gorgeous except the pointless plot which meanders every which way until you don't know which way is up. Oh sure it has its erotic moments and this is the dead giveaway because you realize you have been manipulated into a sexual menage a trois that would embarrass a Playboy bunny. Skip this one folks. This is pure undiluated Hollywood in all its all that glitters is gold except in this case its pure tinsel.

angelofvic The Dying Gaul is the bizarro-world tale of three slightly demented characters: Jeff (Campbell Scott) and Elaine (Patricia Clarkson), a Hollywood "power couple," and Robert (Peter Sarsgaard), a gay screenwriter whose script, titled "The Dying Gaul," Jeff purchases. Through their twisted sexual, emotional, and professional involvements, the three develop pathological intentions towards each other.From the start we see very quirky behaviors and affects in each character, and plot-wise the film grows ever-increasingly implausible as it progresses. Granted, there are gripping moments and situations, but in my view the movie fails to deliver enough substantial resolution or meaning, Lynchian or not, to justify all of its implausibilities.Moreover, the characters spout meaningless aphorisms and pseudo-profundities seemingly designed for the audience to puzzle over afterwards, but no matter how much one pores over the details of the movie, it seems to end up with no more depth or inner meaning than a kaleidoscope, and one full of plot holes at that.The movie relies heavily on the internet chatroom as a plot device. I have a feeling writer-director Craig Lucas's original stage play went over much better back in 1998, when AOL chatrooms, especially gay chatrooms, were new, fresh, and all the rage. A dozen years later, some gay chatrooms are still around and still used for hook-ups, but they aren't the heady new thing that they were back then. Add to this the incongruous plot device of a potentially poisonous plant, and the fact that the DVD has a second, alternate ending in addition to the already ambiguous original ending, and all these factors contribute to the film's being a near-miss.Acting-wise, Peter Sarsgaard is phenomenal, Patricia Clarkson is very strong, and Campbell Scott is slightly uneven and perhaps miscast. In the end, the star of the movie for me is a beautiful infinity pool overlooking the lovely Malibu canyon and the Pacific ocean. With a movie this involved, one should be left with more, but there seems to be nothing behind the surface intricacies of this uneven psycho-thriller.I think the film's worst problem is that it ironically does exactly what it blames Jeff, the Hollywood producer, for doing: It takes a plot (not unlike Robert's original screenplay) which is pro-gay and AIDS-relevant, and turns it on its head in order to make it non-gay or anti-gay for the purposes of box office numbers. The film makes Robert, the gay character, an eventual villain, and that destroys the central metaphor of the plot: empathy, which the famous ancient Roman statue of the Dying Gaul is supposed to evoke. In the end, when the Hollywood producer experiences his own grievous loss (not unlike Robert's and his original screenplay protagonist's losing a lover to AIDS), we the audience are not able to translate this into a mirror-image exercise in empathy and a gaining of empathy for the gay community and for AIDS victims and their loved ones. The fact that the film makes Robert a villain equal to the other two characters precludes this. And therein, in my opinion, lies the central flaw of what could in my mind have been an excellent film. (I have to at least try to give the film the benefit of the doubt though and say that maybe this bizarre doubly cruel irony is a meta-message, but if so I think it's far too abstruse for audiences to grasp.) In any case, some people may enjoy this film, if "Lynch lite" is their style, and if plausibility or coherence is not that important to them. Beyond that, in my opinion it's a mixed bag of somewhat questionable appeal.

marcslope Based on an off-Broadway play I saw and remember nothing about, this modern-day cyber-noir has a clever screenplay (Craig Lucas) undercut by inept direction (Craig Lucas). Its three protagonists -- a cheating bisexual film producer, his taken-for-granted wife, and a promising gay screenwriter -- are all upstaged by the spectacular Malibu-ish beach house where much of the action takes place. But the camera angles and cutting are stodgy, the staging awkward, the composition too artsy (no conference room was ever that color orange), the use of close-ups excessive, Steve Reich's score predictably repetitive and pseudo-chic, the mini-flashbacks confusing, and the long sequences of characters reading their cyber-chat to the camera distinctively uncinematic. Add to that certain plot details that just don't ring true: Would a neophyte gay screenwriter with an uncommercial script really land a million-dollar contract? How would the wife learn all the intimate details about his life that she later uses to destroy him? And would he really be so impressionable as to fall for her scheme? All three actors are excellent (Peter Sarsgaard does mince more than necessary), and Campbell Scott and Sarsgaard have a couple of scenes startling in their intimacy and honesty. But beyond the gaps of credibility in the plotting, these are three unpleasant, inconsistent people who use one another in annoying, unconvincing ways.

pekinman Watching 'The Dying Gaul' reminded me of watching 'The New Age' (Michael Tolkin, 1994). Both share the same facility for 'false grip' that keeps the viewer attending to the action while at the same time mentally numbing one into a false sense that there is any meaning to the whole thing. Perhaps that is the key, referring to the root of the poisonous plant found in the chic ultra-fab Malibu seaside manse's garden which, in the long run (spoilers begin here) acts as a deus ex machina at the end the movie. When the end does arrive I thought, of course, it had to be, what else could possibly have happened to bring this lolloping turkey to a conclusion. The script is a mish-mash of Buddha/Werner Erhard philosophical self-help and becomes a bit eye-rolling at times.Having said all that, I enjoyed many aspects of 'The Dying Gaul', not least of which were the performances of Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard. But, like Judy Davis and Peter Weller in 'The New Age', all their great gifts of reaction to the words cannot mitigate the nebulous quality of the entire project. What IS the point? Is it another Gay Rage film, taking dark-humored revenge on the closeted bi-sexual married couples that abound across the landscape, or is Robert Sandrich (the screenwriter) just another serial killer....? Who knows. It is this mysteriousness that several of my friends were intrigued by and spent many hours discussing and reaching no conclusions. One of my film buff chums went way out on a wine-driven limb about how it was about the Reality of Cyberspace and all kinds of flapdoodle about melding karmas in chat rooms or some such stuff that is posited by the Sarsgaard character early in the film. Then the conversation veered off into other theories as to what this movie was about. When THAT happens in a conversation about a film I become immediately suspicious of its basic integrity. In other words, it is pretty much a pile of cow pats. Only a really great director can pull off such cinematic enigmas; I'm thinking of Peter Weir's masterpiece 'Picnic of Hanging Rock'.There is thinking and there is Thinking. 'The Dying Gaul' calls up the lesser of the two, amounting in the end to cinematic wool-gathering, rather like this comment is becoming, so I won't continue much longer.Basically I think this movie is a woman's revenge movie that backfires dreadfully. But as all the main characters are fairly reprehensible it had no emotional impact at all, it sort of went "phut" at the end when I think I was supposed to be devasted or something. Or perhaps this was part of the black humor bit that I didn't get. But I don't see much funniness in the deaths of children. If 'The Dying Gaul' is someone's idea of 'Black Humor' then I have definitely lived too long. This is a bitter, cruel, nasty movie that provokes puzzlement but little follow-up interest, at least for me. But worth viewing for Clarkson and Sargaard's performances and Steve Reich's interesting score.