The Night Listener (04 August 2006)
directed by Patrick Stettner
starring Robin Williams, Toni Collette, Rory Culkin, Sandra Oh, Joe Morton, Bobby Cannavale, John Cullum, Lisa Emery
|
MPAA rating: Studio: Hart-Sharp Entertainment, Fortissimo Films, IFC Films Script: Armistead Maupin, Terry Anderson, Patrick Stettner Based on the book by: Armistead Maupin Music: Peter Nashel Running time: 82 minutes Tags: abnormal psychology; AIDS; blindness; child abuse; Drama; Mystery; novel adaptation Tactical strength: [5/10]
|
for language and some disquieting sexual content
Gabriel Noone feels the important elements of his life slipping away. His eight year relationship with Jess (Bobby Cannavale) has just broken up, and he feels like he has no new material for his nightly radio story. In the middle of this depression, Gabriel's friend Ashe (Joe Morton) gives Gabriel a manuscript to read. The manuscript describes in minute detail the life of Pete Logand (Rory Culkin) from a young child up until the police arrested his parents for sexually exploiting their fourteen-year old son. Ashe gives Pete Gabriel's phone number and they start having daily conversations. Pete has AIDS and will probably die in the next few months, and occasionally Gabriel speaks with Donna (Toni Collette), a social worker that adopted Pete.
One day while Jess is in the house, he hears messages on Gabriel's answering machine from both Donna and Pete. Jess suggests that Donna and Pete are the same person. At first Gabriel goes through several steps of denial, but Jess has planted a seed of doubt. Gabriel decides to investigate on his own, and flies to Wisconsin to try meeting Donna and Pete. Gabriel finds more evidences that he has taken part in something very strange, and he continues to look for clues in ways that would have been foreign to him just weeks before. Gabriel breaks into a house and wanders around inside. He sneaks around the pediatric ward of several hospitals looking for Pete, but he only finds the security guards chasing him away.
The Night Listener has a very Hitchcockian feel in the way director Stettner develops his story line. Gabriel slowly finds clue after clue, and the uncertainty about Pete builds to a climax and even lingers through the end of the picture. Robin Williams pretty much carries this entire movie from beginning to end. He dusted off Armand from The Birdcage, toned him down, and added a few years for good measure. Williams does a great job with the ebb and flow of uncertainty, but in many of the emotional scenes, I felt like he borrowed pieces of characters out of several other films -- that not a lot of original Williams went into The Night Listener. I think Williams does his best work when allowed to improvise. When he has to follow a script, he seems to suffer as if a vital piece of his character cannot come through. Williams's performance in Jakob the Liar had the same problem. Toni Collette does a good job at creating a character that simultaneously seems harmless and venomous, but her performance doesn't work without Williams providing a character who can see both aspects of that character at once.
The Night Listener doesn't necessarily keep you glued to the edge of your seat, but it does have enough mystery and intrigue to carry the story at a reasonably pace comfortably to the end. The DVD provides some details about actual phone calls Armistead Maupin received and provided the basis for The Night Listener. Armistead says that he wrote a story about the human need for connection to other people and the lengths to which people will go to get that attention. I think Gabriel demonstrates the strength of these connections well with the line, "Why do I grieve over the loss of a person who never existed?" And I'm not sure that the experiences for Gabriel do much more for him than provide a few more stories to tell on his radio program. In the end, Gabriel has a new hole in his heart where yet another person he cared for has left him.
Related Item from Amazon.com
  Paperback |
