Mother Night (1996) + Waking the Dead (2000) – DVDs

MOTHER NIGHT
***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A
starring Nick Nolte, Sheryl Lee, Alan Arkin, John Goodman
screenplay by Robert B. Weide, based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut
directed by Keith Gordon

WAKING THE DEAD
****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Billy Crudup, Jennifer Connelly, Molly Parker, Janet McTeer
screenplay by Robert Dillon, based on the novel by Scott Spencer
directed by Keith Gordon

by Bill Chambers In Timequake, the most recent and arguably most flawed of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s novels (like many of his fans, I found it only intermittently readable), the author writes: “…I have never used semicolons. They don’t do anything, don’t support anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites.” Perhaps Keith Gordon’s Mother Night is one of the few artistically successful cinematic adaptations of a Vonnegut work because Gordon avoids semicolons in his filmmaking–there is no straining to cohere, here.

The protocol for translating Vonnegut to the screen has always been to shuck his literary devices and conceits (the esoteric detours, the rhythmic refrains, a candour best though somehow insufficiently described as autobiographical), yet in Mother Night, the writer’s crusty, idiosyncratic voice practically permeates cinematographer Tom Richmond’s images. That’s because Gordon, whose four films as a director have all been based on novels, is a gifted translator of tone. It helps, one supposes, that Mother Night is also based on that rare Vonnegut book with an accessible, conventional story beneath the prose.

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 Secret Service. They’ve commissioned Campbell, whose success in the theatre gives him entree into the upper echelons of German society, to host a weekly radio broadcast encrypted with messages for American spies and strategists that consists of enough anti-Semitic propaganda to deflect their intentions and ensure the show’s longevity on the air. When the war ends, Howard–now short a wife and muse, Helga (Sheryl Lee), a victim of the Red Army–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 15 years, until a friendly neighbour betrays his identity to a right-wing newsletter that publishes his home address, leading white supremacists and Nazi hunters alike to Howard’s doorstep. The former brings with them Helga, seemingly back from the dead. To avoid capture for war crimes, Howard plans to use his notoriety with the neo-Nazis to facilitate an escape to Mexico City with Helga II in tow, but the intervention of the FBI strands him alone in New York City once more. Left with no reason for being, Howard begins to wonder if he really is guilty of fomenting hate: Can you feign prejudice without succumbing to it? Can you disavow the actions of your alter ego?

This question of whether we become what we pretend to be is essentially an actor’s concern, which is how we might begin to understand the effectiveness of Nolte’s performance. “What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction,” Howard says in voiceover, and Nolte makes profound this image of a pawn in a losing game–a toy soldier without instructions. Howard’s stare loses its will to deceive, transforming Mother Night‘s predictable trajectory into something mortally inescapable. Granted, Gordon and screenwriter Robert B. Weide’s decision to retain the novel’s framing device of Howard in prison prematurely telegraphs an already inevitable ending, although it enhances an intriguing metaphor about the writing life being a jail of its own. If Gordon avoids semicolons, he makes full use of Vonnegut’s exclamation points.

Stripped of Vonnegut’s voice, however, Vonnegut’s narratives lose some essential layer of irony. Still, though Mother Night ultimately feels like the warm-up act to Gordon’s monumentally affecting Waking the Dead, I appreciate its well-honed tragicomedy, as well as its inclination to leave certain Vonnegut motifs, such as the fleeting presence of veteran Bernard V. O’Hare, intact. (How disappointing it was to discover that Alan Rudolph’s much-maligned Breakfast of Champions chickened out when it came to adapting its source’s closing chapters, a wry personal appearance by Vonnegut.) Heck, it’s worth a viewing for Nolte alone.

With Waking the Dead, based on the book by Endless Love novelist Scott Spencer, Gordon revisits many of Mother Night‘s themes, including the notion that true love gone is always welcome back in whatever corrupted form. Here, again, we see two personalities eager to fit 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 Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), a young, churchgoing activisit with a distaste for politicians; he is law student Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup), who, when they first meet, has just finished a tour in the Coast Guard. He tells Sarah he wants to be President, and she smiles ambiguously. Fielding asks why. “Because I know you’re telling the truth.” Love blossoms quickly between these two people who hope to change the world in radically different ways.

A prologue tells us 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 tender but fraught courtship 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 memory, but the real deal. Did she fake her death? Is she a ghost? Has Fielding taken leave of his senses? Ever the magician, Gordon manages to simultaneously resolve Fielding’s breakdown and preserve the film’s delicate ambiguity.

In his otherwise indifferent review 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 inclined to challenge Rosenbaum’s disenchanted review of the film itself (neither Gordon favourite Kubrick nor Last Year at Marienbad sprang to mind as I watched Waking the Dead–indeed, Sarah and Fielding’s enthralling romance is so beautifully observed in and of itself that it immobilized my ability to perceive any cinematic precedents to 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.

Waking the Dead is finally a film about the fear that as we grow older and our values change, we not only betray who were once were, we also diminish the people we once knew and loved and turn them into footnotes. To lambaste it–and Rosenbaum was kinder than most critics–is to deny the intensity of first love, or to simply resent it. I don’t want to say much more for fear of blunting the film’s effectiveness. Experiencing Waking the Dead is, as its closing song invokes, like watching the snow fall in beautiful, weepy sympathy with the oncoming of winter. Thanks, Keith.

THE DVDs
Mother Night and Waking the Dead come to DVD from New Line Home Video and USA Home Entertainment, respectively. 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. 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, seems purposeful. Happily, Waking the Dead‘s clean, 1.85:1, 16×9-enhanced image has no trouble matching it.

Waking the Dead‘s 5.1 Dolby Digital mix has the edge on Mother Night‘s, thanks to better-equalized dialogue and a spooky, bassy, omnidirectional sound montage early on as Fielding’s paranoia mounts. Mother Night takes far less advantage of the 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 screenwriter Weide contribute a piecemeal feature-length commentary to the Mother Night DVD, while Gordon flies solo on Waking the Dead. These yakkers offer fascinating insight into the art of translating published fiction for the screen, though neither soars to the eccentric heights that Nick Nolte frequently reaches in his Campbell-esque ramblings on yet another track of the disc. A necessity for understanding the editing challenges both films posed is each disc’s overflowing deleted scenes section, also with optional commentary from Gordon, who’s delighted this stuff is seeing the light of day. There were some real chestnuts littering Waking the Dead‘s trim bin–I share producer Jodie Foster’s remorse that Ed Harris wound up on the cutting-room floor. 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 widescreen, whereas Waking the Dead‘s were mastered in 4:3 from a dub of workprint material.

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

• Mother Night
  113 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround, French Dolby Surround; CC; English, French subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; New Line
• Waking the Dead
  106 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; USA