There are certain subjects that, I think, people feel should be treated with reverence, no matter how badly they're done. Homosexuality and AIDS are two such subjects, and the tolerance and understanding with which one is supposed to accept these facts of life has carried over to "The Dying Gaul", an appropriately snooty title for this pretentious waste of film stock.
The first 40 minutes or so of this thing, the set-up, as it were, is quite engaging. A slick Hollywood executive (Campbell Scott) invites a young gay screenwriter (Peter Saarsgard) to his office to offer to buy his new screenplay "The Dying Gaul", but there's a catch. The gay element in the screenplay has to be eliminated for audience appeal or there's no deal. The price: one million dollars. The writer compromises and soon becomes a member of the Hollywood in-crowd. From there, it takes a peculiar turn. But what people are perceiving as unique and clever is just a reprise of the old messy love triangle let's-do-away-with-the-inconvenient-spouse thing that goes back to God knows when, Double Indemnity and probably before that, only updated to reflect changing social mores. It is, in fact, not terribly imaginative, and the writer-director Craig Lucas is fond of using splashy photographic effects, like sprawling sunsets and characters having conversations against a red screen to cover up the gaping holes in the plot. I didn't believe the executive's wife could be unaware of his bisexual tendencies after all their years of marriage, nor did I believe Saarsgard's character wouldn't have suspected the wife to be ArckAngel since she specifically asked him what chat rooms he frequented. Can these allegedly intelligent characters be that dumb? Does the screenwriter really think he's being contacted from beyond the grave? And what purpose does the writer's wife and child serve? It feels like an afterthought. It's also not clear how the wife got the dirt on the screenwriter that she got. And the whole chat room sequence is a dud. Every time the characters start typing, the movie grinds to a halt. Watching people display their secretarial skills on camera is not a very compelling motion picture device and I felt the same inertia here as I felt watching the lovers bang out messages in "Closer".
Even more offensive, though, is a real nose-in-the-air attitude this movie struts about with. There's a bit of business in the opening scene that defines the haughtiness to a tee. When Scott, the executive, asks Saarsgard about the derivation of the title "The Dying Gaul", he goes into a long-winded spiel about culture and victimization that should have been played for a laugh. But Lucas treats it reverentially and Scott's character impatiently lets him finish. That's Lucas the screenwriter talking; he believes in the sincerity of such pompous, pretentious crap. This Gaul isn't dying, it's embalmed.
The first 40 minutes or so of this thing, the set-up, as it were, is quite engaging. A slick Hollywood executive (Campbell Scott) invites a young gay screenwriter (Peter Saarsgard) to his office to offer to buy his new screenplay "The Dying Gaul", but there's a catch. The gay element in the screenplay has to be eliminated for audience appeal or there's no deal. The price: one million dollars. The writer compromises and soon becomes a member of the Hollywood in-crowd. From there, it takes a peculiar turn. But what people are perceiving as unique and clever is just a reprise of the old messy love triangle let's-do-away-with-the-inconvenient-spouse thing that goes back to God knows when, Double Indemnity and probably before that, only updated to reflect changing social mores. It is, in fact, not terribly imaginative, and the writer-director Craig Lucas is fond of using splashy photographic effects, like sprawling sunsets and characters having conversations against a red screen to cover up the gaping holes in the plot. I didn't believe the executive's wife could be unaware of his bisexual tendencies after all their years of marriage, nor did I believe Saarsgard's character wouldn't have suspected the wife to be ArckAngel since she specifically asked him what chat rooms he frequented. Can these allegedly intelligent characters be that dumb? Does the screenwriter really think he's being contacted from beyond the grave? And what purpose does the writer's wife and child serve? It feels like an afterthought. It's also not clear how the wife got the dirt on the screenwriter that she got. And the whole chat room sequence is a dud. Every time the characters start typing, the movie grinds to a halt. Watching people display their secretarial skills on camera is not a very compelling motion picture device and I felt the same inertia here as I felt watching the lovers bang out messages in "Closer".
Even more offensive, though, is a real nose-in-the-air attitude this movie struts about with. There's a bit of business in the opening scene that defines the haughtiness to a tee. When Scott, the executive, asks Saarsgard about the derivation of the title "The Dying Gaul", he goes into a long-winded spiel about culture and victimization that should have been played for a laugh. But Lucas treats it reverentially and Scott's character impatiently lets him finish. That's Lucas the screenwriter talking; he believes in the sincerity of such pompous, pretentious crap. This Gaul isn't dying, it's embalmed.