This observation does not concern subtext. Rather, it is made in an effort to convey Gordon's practical storytelling gifts--beside all else, his ability to spin a traditionally satisfying yarn, an art lost on both modern movies and, to a certain extent, on Vonnegut himself, whose popularity stems not from narrative coherence, but conceptual idiosyncrasies, rhythmic patter, and candour best though somehow insufficiently described as autobiographical.

The protocol for translating Vonnegut to the screen has always been to shuck those literary devices, yet in Mother Night, the writer's crusty voice all but penetrates cinematographer Tom Richmond's images. That's because another of Gordon's skills is preserving the tone of his fount material (so far, all of his films are based on the printed word). Thus and thus, Mother Night, which is based on that rare Vonnegut book with an accessible, formal tale beneath the stylishness, capitalizes on two of Gordon's various strengths.

As a young man at the mercy of his parents, playwright Howard E. Campbell (Nick Nolte)--a Jr., like his creator--moves to Berlin in 1919 and remains there for the duration of Hitler's reign in obligation to the American secret service. They've commissioned Campbell, whose success in the theatre enables him to float in and out of German society's higher social circles, to host a codified weekly radio broadcast consisting of enough anti-Semitic content to make it popular among Aryan listeners. When the war ends, Howard--short a wife, Helga (Sheryl Lee)--relocates to the United States, the stench of concentration camps lingering in his soul.

Howard resides under his own name in a New York flat without incident for fifteen years, until the editors of a right wing newsletter do their research and publish his home address, leading all manner of loathsome individual--in addition to Helga, seemingly back from the grave, and Israeli task forces--to Howard's door. To avoid capture for war crimes (the C.I.A. has disavowed all knowledge of Campbell's assignment, natch), the former faux propagandist goes underground with neo-Nazis; embraced once again by the enemy, Howard begins to doubt his true place of belonging: is a man capable of feigning prejudice as guilty as he who is conscientiously hateful. Can we ever really have an alter ego?

Howard's central quandary (do we become what we purport to be?, to paraphrase) is an actor's concern, which is how we might interpret the effectiveness of Nolte's performance. The subtly heightening apathy of Nolte's gaze--Howard's stare loses its will to deceive--overcomes the obviousness of Mother Night's trajectory. If Gordon avoids semicolons, he makes full use of Vonnegut's exclamation points. Maybe, at this stage, I'm just too seasoned a reader of Vonnegut to be surprised by the morally ironic underpinnings of his cock-and-bull; certainly, Gordon's decision to structure Mother Night as an extended flashback that occasionally returns to Howard in prison telegraphs an already quite inevitable ending off the bat, although I support this choice as it empowers him to skip through Howard's experiences efficiently and draw out an intriguing metaphor about the writing life being a jail of its own.

If my behavior towards Mother Night is starting to sound less than enthusiastic, allow me to explain why and to, I hope, rectify. I viewed the DVD of Gordon's next film, Waking the Dead, shortly after seeing Mother Night, and the result was that the latter looked like the warm-up it is to something monumentally affecting. Still, I appreciate the well-honed tragicomedy of Mother Night, and its inclination to leave Vonnegut motifs, such as the fleeting presence of veteran Bernard V. O'Hare, intact. (How disappointing it was to discover that Alan Rudolph's maligned Breakfast of Champions omitted the pith of his source's closing chapters, a wry personal appearance by Vonnegut.) Heck, Nolte's contribution alone is worth a sitting.

Waking the Dead, based on the novel by Scott Spencer (which I have not read), rehashes many of Mother Night's themes, including the notion that true love gone is always welcome back. Similar conclusions are reached in either picture as to what constitutes this most intense of connections, a position I approximately interpret to be the merging of two personalities into one soul; compare the line, "Tell me what you live for and I will live for that, too!" spoken by Howard's paramour in Mother Night to this uncannily similar exchange from Waking the Dead: "You can't be everything to me," she says. "I want to be," he retorts. She is young, churchgoing activisit Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly); he's law student Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup). When they first meet, he's just finished a tour in the coast guard, and tells her he wants to be President. She smiles. He asks why. "Because I know you're telling the truth." Love blossoms quickly between these two people who hope to change the world.

We learn in prologue that Sarah died in a terrorist bombing. The smoothly non-linear Waking the Dead reconstructs her relationship to Fielding (first glimpsed reacting tearfully to a news report of Sarah's death) from there, intercutting their utterly truthful byplay with Fielding's lonely run for congress almost a decade later. The campaign is so trying that his mind starts playing tricks on him, and eventually, he is convinced that Sarah is haunting him--not just her spirit, but the real deal. Ever the magician, Gordon manages to simultaneously resolve Fielding's breakdown and preserve the film's delicate ambiguity.

In his otherwise indifferent opinion of Waking the Dead, the CHICAGO READER's Jonathan Rosenbaum singles out Connelly's presence for being so indelible here that it lingers, as it should, when Sarah's not around. Unfortunately, terming Crudup "limited by [his] affective range" cancels out such a razor-sharp observation; while I'm not intellectually equipped to challenge Rosenbaum's disentranced review of the film itself (neither Kubrick nor L'année dernière chez Marienbad sprang to mind as I watched Waking the Dead--the scrupulous pathology of Sarah and Fielding's romance so enthralled me that it immobilized my ability to perceive the cinematic techniques that helped to realize it), I do take issue with his dismissal of Crudup's passionate work, in which you'll find the least Hollywood portrayal of a nervous breakdown this side of Julianne Moore in Safe. Finally, the role that justifies his perpetual It Boy hype.

To lambaste the film--and Rosenbaum's review was kinder than the majority's--is to concede you've never let love devour you whole, or to resent that you have. (And to describe you my favourite moments is to deny you the impact of the film's brutal honesty.) Experiencing Waking the Dead is, as its closing song invokes, like watching the snow fall down, a beautiful, weepy reprieve from the winter blahs. Thanks, Keith.

Mother Night and Waking the Dead come to us on DVD, from New Line Home Video and USA Home Entertainment, respectively, in similarly executed Special Editions (neither of which is billed as such). By now it's a cliché to praise a New Line video transfer--it's even a cliché to acknowledge the cliché of praising a New Line video transfer--but what can I say? I'm a hack when it comes to tech talk. Letterboxed at 1.85:1 and enhanced for anamorphic displays, the dark Mother Night is impeccably detailed and free of compression artifacts; grain, when noticeable, is purposeful. Happily, Waking the Dead's clean, 1.85:1, 16x9-enhanced image has no trouble matching it.

Waking the Dead's 5.1 Dolby Digital mix has the edge on Mother Night's, however, thanks to better-equalized dialogue and a spooky, bassy, omni-directional sound montage early on in Fielding's paranoia. Mother Night takes far less advantage of a six-track environment. (Before I go on, I must mention a great, relevant supplement on Waking the Dead--under the menu screens play selections from Tomandandy's evocative score.)

Gordon and scriptor Robert Wiede chip in a piecemeal feature-length commentary on the Mother Night DVD; Gordon waxes solo on Waking the Dead. These parleys offer fascinating insight into the art of translating published fiction for the screen; neither soars to the eccentric heights that Nick Nolte frequently reaches in his Campbell-esque ramblings on yet another track of Mother Night. A necessity for understanding the editing challenges both films posed is each disc's overflowing deleted scenes section, also with optional, delighted Gordon commentary. There were some real chestnuts buried on Waking the Dead's cutting room floor--I share producer Jodie Foster's rue that Ed Harris wound up in the trim bin; likewise, the bulk of David Strathairn's impressive cameo as O'Hare in Mother Night didn't make it past the rough cut stage. Note: Mother Night's omissions are in pristine anamorphic, but Waking the Dead's have been mastered in 4:3 from a dub of workprint material.

A videotaped conversation with Nolte and Vonnegut conducted on the set of Mother Night by Weide, striking in its casualness, plus a sinister trailer that never reached multiplexes (Gordon again supplies commentary), the theatrical trailer, and interesting original newsreels of "The Eichman Trial" narrated by Ed Herlihy round out this package. A five-minute promotional featurette, the trailer and cast/crew bios finish off the absolute must-own Waking the Dead.-Bill Chambers