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List Price: $19.95 | | Label: Polygram USA Video
Salesrank: 97616
Released: September 26, 2000 |
| Our Price: $6.01 |
| Used Price: $1.89 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Actor-turned-director Keith Gordon has crafted a touching love story that transcends time, political ideology, and even death. The movie opens in 1974 as Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) watches a TV news report announcing the death in Chile of three American activists, including Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), his one true love. The story flashes back to when they first met, showing how he was always more conservative, with grand political aspirations, but the relationship worked because they both shared dreams of making the world a better place, one from inside the system and the other from outside. The movie also flashes forward to his life in the early '80s, when he gets tapped to run for Congress. He starts having visions of her, but he is never quite sure if she's a hallucination arising out of his stress, a manifestation of his political consciousness, an out-and-out ghost, or maybe she's still alive somehow. Whatever she is, his deep longing for her is making him crack up. Gordon smartly jumps the story back and forth in time, forgoing an "objective" reality in favor of a more subjective and emotional one. It is a structure based on memory, and that in tandem with the content is what makes Waking the Dead a very powerful film indeed.--Andy Spletzer
Waking the Dead Reviews:
love and idealism 
2009-01-29 - Perhaps Americans are simply ignorant of recent history, but still, I have a hard time believing that no one writing a review of this film has mentioned that Scott Spencer and Keith Gordon based the character of "Sarah" very closely on an actual person: Ronni Moffitt, the young political activist killed in the car-bomb assassination of Chilean Orlando Letelier in 1976. (agents of the Pinochet regime were convicted of the murders). Some might say the particulars of Moffitt's life shouldn't really have much to do with the success or failure of Waking the Dead as a fictional dramatic work, and in a narrow sense, that's true. But as the nature of this movie is the struggle of the higher duty of idealism vs. the earthly satisfaction of love, the real-life activism of Moffitt is relevant because of the way it "grounds" the idealism of Sarah. As much as conservative believers in the supremacy of the self might want to think it absurd, there really were and are people who sacrific to make things better. And the dramatic "path" of this movie is Fielding's slow back-and-forth realization, though the thickets of his lost love, of the ultimate importance of idealistic sacrific. This is why the movie's final scene (don't worry -- I won't give it away here), which no one else has mentioned, is so crucially important.
On the filmmaking details I have little to add. Crudup and Connelly, superb in so many other films, are superb here. Gordon's flashback-and-forward technique occasionally seems artsy but functions well enough in conveying the story. Challenging and moving.
Tantalizing
2009-01-28 - "Waking the Dead" is a good drama. I found the central premise moving. Fielding Pierce loses his girlfriend Sarah to an act of violence. His longing for her is so strong after her passing that his desire to see her begins to make him question his sanity. Anybody who has lost someone important to them should be able to relate. Billy Crudup from "Mission Impossible III" plays the young lawyer/politician Fielding Pierce. He takes the performance to the edge with his desperation. Jennifer Connelly who won her Oscar for "A Beautiful Mind" the year before this film plays Sarah, a woman who is politically driven, which puts her in danger. Janet McTeer, who did an excellent job in Songcatcher & who was nominated for an Oscar for "Tumbleweeds," plays Fielding's sister who is his emotional support. Paul Hipp plays the wacko brother Danny whose Asian girlfriend is played by the talented Sandra Oh. This is a haunting story that I found tantalizes long after the disc ends. Enjoy.
Bravo! 
2008-10-13 - WOW! I think Jennfier Connely was real & the CIA made it look like there was a fire. Great acting by both main characters.
If you haven't seen this movie then you should
2008-09-22 - I love this movie for so many reasons...
Its a great movie about love and loss.
He sees his girlfriend everywhere he goes and he remembers all
the good times and how they had to work out all their differences.
He was a into politics and had alot of different views and was hoping to be president one day, his girlfriend Sarah wanted to save the world and
no more war kind of view. They had a this love for each other that no matter how far apart thier views were they loved each other very much.
Jennifer Connelly and Billy Crudup did a great performance in this movie.
Amazing Movie
2008-01-19 - This is one of the few movies that I have seen that I think is better than the book. Not that the Scott Spencer novel is bad (I would give it four stars), but I think that the fact that the movie refuses to answer the central question of whether or not Sarah really is alive (and not by a screen turning black, but by focusing the attention on Fielding's point of view instead) adds to the mysterious elements of the plot. Jump at the chance to buy this movie. It is one of the best of the last ten years, and a bit of an undiscovered gem.
