movie minute

In The Still Of The Night: Robin Williams, in a surprisingly restrained role, stars as gay writer/radio host, Gabriel Noone in the film The Night Listener. Noone is in the midst of a creative struggle because of his deteriorating relationship with Jess (Bobby Cannavale in another gay role himself; he played Will's lover on Will & Grace). After Jess realizes he is not going to die of AIDS, he decides he wants to "live" life and that does not include living Gabriel, his lover of eight years. Jess wants to twist the knife even more by not telling Gabriel that he wants to end their relationship. Usually if a lover moves out, that signifies the end of a relationship; call it what it is. Sorry, I digress. When Gabriel reads a manuscript about a 14-year-old boy with a horrible past, Gabriel becomes phone pals with the kid. The kid, Pete, (played by Rory Culkin; the one who can act) is now safely living with his "new mom" Donna. Donna is played by talented (and not afraid to look homelier than usual or creepy) actress Toni Collette. Collette is racking up quite an impressive body of work, showing how versatile she is. She was wonderful in last year's In Her Shoes and is supposed to be good in Little Miss Sunshine (which I've yet to see).

As Pete and Gabriel become more intimate with each other, the question of how true Pete's story is (which he wants to have published) becomes an obsession with Gabriel. Pete is dying of AIDS and is a "very sick boy" and may not have long to live. Gabriel wants to see him before it's too late but access to the boy is difficult with over-protective Donna.

When I saw that Armistead Maupin was one of the screenplay writers (it's adapted from Maupin's book), I thought it was a good sign. I was wrong. In the book, what we don't see is more suspensful than what we do and the truth is even blurrier than what we're shown in the film. The term Night Listener, an obvious reference to Gabriel's nighttime show, is also a reference to hearing what we want and missing the whole picture. As Gabriel says in a voiceover, "I pick out the shiny parts and discard the rest." It's what we discard that becomes more important that the shiny parts. The discarded parts fill in the blanks that we would miss otherwise.

As Gabriel races to find Pete, he discovers things about himself that he doesn't like and realizes that he's trying to hold on to things that aren't necessarily real. The film has two major flaws that were not portrayed in the book. The first one is discovered early on and the second one is the ending, not to mention parts in the movie when Gabriel travels to Wisconsin. The movie is well acted, don't get me wrong and it's nicely paced. Not a lot is thrown out from the book that would be needed to explain some things. The problem with the visual is that in the book we are left to wonder and draw our own conclusion. In the movie, we are shown too much as if we would be in the dark if we weren't shown everything possible. As a result the film becomes cluttered and unfocused. This is one movie where being in the dark, literally and figuratively, would have worked better.

Bags of popcorn (out of 5): 2.5


peace,

paul