Knight at the Movies ARCHIVES
Headgames:
The Dying Gaul and Jarhead
11-2-05 Knight at the Movies/Windy City Times column
by Richard Knight, Jr.
The Dying Gaul is one of those complex relationship movies whose success rises or falls on the strength of its
actors. Without them, the thin veneer that separates its complex, lyrical script from a fussy, over literate one
dissolves. This is often the case of plays transferred to the big screen. Badly cast, the words resist, the attempts
to “open up” the play become all too obvious, and the roar of the greasepaint blatantly apparent. Six Degrees of
Separation comes immediately to mind. Though Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland were acting forces to
behold, Will Smith’s inexperience in one of the leading roles effectively hobbled director Fred Schepisi’s otherwise
glorious movie. Proof, another recent play to screen transfer, similarly suffered from the wrong casting of Jake
Gyllenhaal in a key role as a math nerd.
This was the first thought that came to mind as the credits rolled on The Dying Gaul. Thank God Craig Lucas who
wrote the play the movie’s based on, the screenplay and makes his feature debut here had the good fortune to
have perfect casting in Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard and Campbell Scott. Together they enact this tragic
triptych so beautifully that the difficult material soars. It’s a wonderful movie but the elation comes from watching
actors doing their best and not from what they’re caught up in doing. That’s a tiny but important distinction
because though The Dying Gaul is such a good movie, it’s not a likeable or emotionally easy one.
At the outset, in the year 1995, the guarded writer Robert (Sarsgaard) sells his screenplay, entitled “The Dying
Gaul,” to the equally obnoxious confident studio executive Jeffrey (Campbell). Robert is grief-stricken after losing
his lover and horrified when Jeffrey tells him that the only way he’ll buy the script is if Robert will change it from a
gay love story into a straight one. But the lure of the million dollar fee he will get and the chance to do the
rewrites is strong enough for Robert to make the extraordinary concession. Soon after, two pivotal things happen:
Robert and Jeffrey begin an affair and Robert meets Elaine (Clarkson), Jeffrey’s wife.
The connection between Robert and Jeffrey is tentative at best while the one between Robert and Elaine is
immediate. Lucas gets the often extraordinary connection between gay men and straight women on the screen.
We see that Robert tolerates Jeffrey and lets him use his body as a way to expunge his own grief but with Elaine
he allows himself to be vulnerable and honest. During a visit to the couple’s mouth dropping mansion, Robert tells
her about nightly visits to online chat rooms and Elaine, a stifled writer herself and intrigued by the possibilities,
creates an online personality and quickly discovers Robert’s identity. Their online chats soon become an emotional
therapy for both but when Robert innocently reveals that he’s sleeping with the wife of the man he’s working for,
the horrified Elaine ups the ante. Through details that she intuits or has learned from Robert, she convinces him
that he’s chatting online with the spirit of his dead lover. Some of the things she writes startle and scare Robert
with their perception and Lucas presents them in close-up bathed in a halo of light accompanied by the austere
beauty of minimalist Steve Reich’s music. The decision to use Reich’s chilly music throughout is a brilliant stroke
by Lucas that seems to portend the movie’s surprising conclusion.
The openly gay Lucas wrote the seminal Longtime Companion and returns – after a 15 year absence – to a gay
themed work. But the gay-bisexual-straight sexuality of the trio at the center of The Dying Gaul is really beside
the point. This is a movie about the dangers of secrets and lies – those we tell ourselves and to others – the
consequences and rewards of our choices in life and a lot more besides. It’s not an easy movie to sum up and I
don't think the marketing label that it’s being given as a “psychological thriller” is close to accurate though there is
a decided uneasiness that permeates the sunny, lavish world these characters inhabit. They know it, we know it
and that is surely what Lucas intended. Whether audiences will take this difficult work to their hearts is easy to
answer – they won’t – but neither will audience members who give themselves over to The Dying Gaul be likely to
soon forget it. I know I won’t.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This year’s Jude Law, Jake Gyllenhaal, so badly miscast in the recent Proof, now arrives as the troubled 20-year
old Marine in Jarhead. It’s a much better role for the charismatic actor and in Sam Mendes’ adaptation of
Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir, Gyllenhaal easily fills the leading man shoes. He is joined onscreen by Peter
Sarsgaard (in his fifth film appearance this year), Jamie Foxx and a host of young actors who play members of
Gyllenhaal’s unit.
At first the movie is interchangeable with many other film depictions of innocent “soft” civilian men turned into
toughened soldiers by their indoctrination into the armed services. There are the usual assortment of fellow
trainee soldiers along with our naive hero: the strong silent man of steel (Sarsgaard), the brash, cocky braggart,
the bookish (perhaps closeted) quiet nerd, the brutish southern big mouth and the tough but humane commanding
officer (Foxx). And, of course, the usual assortment of fag jokes and gay innuendos – this being the American
military after all. But here and there Mendes offers an interesting scene with a twist – like the one in which the
young Marines watch the helicopter/Valkyries scene from Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and get more and more riled
up as the violence on the screen progresses. It’s like one of those calculated “Hates” from Orwell’s “1984.”
When the troops are sent to Iraq, however, the film moves into much darker territory. The Marines are ready for
action – they’ve been trained to kill but instead of going into battle they wait and wait and wait until the boredom,
the heat, the unreality of their situation begins to take its psychological toll. When at last they approach the oil
fields they’ve been assigned to guard Mendes shows us what literally must have been hell on earth. In one
disturbing scene Gyllenhaal encounters a lone horse covered in oil, slowly limping along as if in a daze. How could
anyone ever return to civilian life and not be haunted for the rest of their life by such encounters? Jarhead vividly
demonstrates that even in a war where no one shoots their weapon or once encounters the enemy they can’t.
The Dying Gaul and Jarhead
11-2-05 Knight at the Movies/Windy City Times column
by Richard Knight, Jr.
The Dying Gaul is one of those complex relationship movies whose success rises or falls on the strength of its
actors. Without them, the thin veneer that separates its complex, lyrical script from a fussy, over literate one
dissolves. This is often the case of plays transferred to the big screen. Badly cast, the words resist, the attempts
to “open up” the play become all too obvious, and the roar of the greasepaint blatantly apparent. Six Degrees of
Separation comes immediately to mind. Though Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland were acting forces to
behold, Will Smith’s inexperience in one of the leading roles effectively hobbled director Fred Schepisi’s otherwise
glorious movie. Proof, another recent play to screen transfer, similarly suffered from the wrong casting of Jake
Gyllenhaal in a key role as a math nerd.
This was the first thought that came to mind as the credits rolled on The Dying Gaul. Thank God Craig Lucas who
wrote the play the movie’s based on, the screenplay and makes his feature debut here had the good fortune to
have perfect casting in Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard and Campbell Scott. Together they enact this tragic
triptych so beautifully that the difficult material soars. It’s a wonderful movie but the elation comes from watching
actors doing their best and not from what they’re caught up in doing. That’s a tiny but important distinction
because though The Dying Gaul is such a good movie, it’s not a likeable or emotionally easy one.
At the outset, in the year 1995, the guarded writer Robert (Sarsgaard) sells his screenplay, entitled “The Dying
Gaul,” to the equally obnoxious confident studio executive Jeffrey (Campbell). Robert is grief-stricken after losing
his lover and horrified when Jeffrey tells him that the only way he’ll buy the script is if Robert will change it from a
gay love story into a straight one. But the lure of the million dollar fee he will get and the chance to do the
rewrites is strong enough for Robert to make the extraordinary concession. Soon after, two pivotal things happen:
Robert and Jeffrey begin an affair and Robert meets Elaine (Clarkson), Jeffrey’s wife.
The connection between Robert and Jeffrey is tentative at best while the one between Robert and Elaine is
immediate. Lucas gets the often extraordinary connection between gay men and straight women on the screen.
We see that Robert tolerates Jeffrey and lets him use his body as a way to expunge his own grief but with Elaine
he allows himself to be vulnerable and honest. During a visit to the couple’s mouth dropping mansion, Robert tells
her about nightly visits to online chat rooms and Elaine, a stifled writer herself and intrigued by the possibilities,
creates an online personality and quickly discovers Robert’s identity. Their online chats soon become an emotional
therapy for both but when Robert innocently reveals that he’s sleeping with the wife of the man he’s working for,
the horrified Elaine ups the ante. Through details that she intuits or has learned from Robert, she convinces him
that he’s chatting online with the spirit of his dead lover. Some of the things she writes startle and scare Robert
with their perception and Lucas presents them in close-up bathed in a halo of light accompanied by the austere
beauty of minimalist Steve Reich’s music. The decision to use Reich’s chilly music throughout is a brilliant stroke
by Lucas that seems to portend the movie’s surprising conclusion.
The openly gay Lucas wrote the seminal Longtime Companion and returns – after a 15 year absence – to a gay
themed work. But the gay-bisexual-straight sexuality of the trio at the center of The Dying Gaul is really beside
the point. This is a movie about the dangers of secrets and lies – those we tell ourselves and to others – the
consequences and rewards of our choices in life and a lot more besides. It’s not an easy movie to sum up and I
don't think the marketing label that it’s being given as a “psychological thriller” is close to accurate though there is
a decided uneasiness that permeates the sunny, lavish world these characters inhabit. They know it, we know it
and that is surely what Lucas intended. Whether audiences will take this difficult work to their hearts is easy to
answer – they won’t – but neither will audience members who give themselves over to The Dying Gaul be likely to
soon forget it. I know I won’t.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This year’s Jude Law, Jake Gyllenhaal, so badly miscast in the recent Proof, now arrives as the troubled 20-year
old Marine in Jarhead. It’s a much better role for the charismatic actor and in Sam Mendes’ adaptation of
Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir, Gyllenhaal easily fills the leading man shoes. He is joined onscreen by Peter
Sarsgaard (in his fifth film appearance this year), Jamie Foxx and a host of young actors who play members of
Gyllenhaal’s unit.
At first the movie is interchangeable with many other film depictions of innocent “soft” civilian men turned into
toughened soldiers by their indoctrination into the armed services. There are the usual assortment of fellow
trainee soldiers along with our naive hero: the strong silent man of steel (Sarsgaard), the brash, cocky braggart,
the bookish (perhaps closeted) quiet nerd, the brutish southern big mouth and the tough but humane commanding
officer (Foxx). And, of course, the usual assortment of fag jokes and gay innuendos – this being the American
military after all. But here and there Mendes offers an interesting scene with a twist – like the one in which the
young Marines watch the helicopter/Valkyries scene from Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and get more and more riled
up as the violence on the screen progresses. It’s like one of those calculated “Hates” from Orwell’s “1984.”
When the troops are sent to Iraq, however, the film moves into much darker territory. The Marines are ready for
action – they’ve been trained to kill but instead of going into battle they wait and wait and wait until the boredom,
the heat, the unreality of their situation begins to take its psychological toll. When at last they approach the oil
fields they’ve been assigned to guard Mendes shows us what literally must have been hell on earth. In one
disturbing scene Gyllenhaal encounters a lone horse covered in oil, slowly limping along as if in a daze. How could
anyone ever return to civilian life and not be haunted for the rest of their life by such encounters? Jarhead vividly
demonstrates that even in a war where no one shoots their weapon or once encounters the enemy they can’t.
A war of the words, a war movie without a war
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