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Waking The Dead [DVD] [1999]
 
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Waking The Dead [DVD] [1999]

DVD ~ Billy Crudup
4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
RRP: £5.99
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Waking The Dead [DVD] [1999]
69% buy the item featured on this page:
Waking The Dead [DVD] [1999] 4.6 out of 5 stars (7)
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Product details

  • Actors: Billy Crudup, Jennifer Connelly, Molly Parker, Janet McTeer, Paul Hipp
  • Directors: Keith Gordon
  • Writers: Robert Dillon, Scott Spencer
  • Producers: Keith Gordon, Irene Litinsky, Jodie Foster, Linda Reisman, Stuart Kleinman
  • Format: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
  • Language English
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: Uca Catalogue
  • DVD Release Date: 4 April 2005
  • Run Time: 101 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B000057X1E
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 8,205 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Waking the Dead, like director-writer Keith Gordon's earlier films (The Chocolate War, A Midnight Clear, Mother Night), is based on a well-regarded modern novel (by Scott Spencer) and has a great many quiet virtues: a genuine engagement with near-contemporary America, complicated characters well-played by a cast of perfectly selected not-quite-star performers and a questioning approach that sits ill with the too-easy answers of most contemporary films. The complex story opens in 1974 with the death in a car bomb explosion of Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), a radical working with a faction of left-wing Catholics to rescue dissidents from Chile. This has a devastating effect on her straighter boyfriend, Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup), who is working within the system with an eye on rising in the Democratic Party through the patronage of a senior figure (Hal Holbrook), the man who is eventually to become the President.

We flash back to 1972 and Fielding's intense relationship with Sarah, marked by romantic and political differences that feel far more real than the contrived oppositional arguments in most political movies. Then skip 10 years forward to find a sleeker, hollow-faced Fielding running for Congress, tormented not only by memories of Sarah but her actual or phantasmal appearances. Another film might play this as a paranoid mystery thriller, but this goes for psychology, and Crudup delivers an intense portrait of a man cracking up by the loss of his ideals as much as his life's love--climaxing in a terrific restaurant outburst to his needy, congratulatory family. Unreleased theatrically in the UK, this outstanding film has award-quality performances from Crudup and Connelly, both doing their best screen work to date.

On the DVD: The picture is presented in 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby Digital sound. You get the usual trailer, filmographies and puff piece featurette, but also three superb extras: a commentary from Gordon that passionately and intelligently addresses the thematic material and production circumstances of the film; a package of deleted scenes that goes well beyond the usual irrelevant snippets--everything here offers additional insights into the plot and character; tracks from the composers Tomandandy which play over the menus--a rare feature that's liable to become more common. --Kim Newman

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Featurette
Deleted Scenes
Director's Commentary
Theatrical Trailer
Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Surround
Subtitles: English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
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Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Fielding Pierce runs for Congress haunted by his dead love, 4 Feb 2005
By Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Waking the Dead [DVD] [2000] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC] (DVD)
Things get a little too cute at the end of "Waking the Dead," and while I appreciate the idea of leaving up what "really" happened to the audience, I do not think that this was the film was the one in which to try this particular trick. After all, this movie is not a ghost story, even though the main character is haunted by the dead woman that he loved, but a film that mixes romance and politics to the point where the film's big question really matters and should have been answered more directly.

In 1982 a stunned Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) learns form the evening news that the woman he loves, Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connely) has been killed by a car bomb attack because of her involvement in opposing the corrupt government of Chile and U.S. involvement. We then go back to see how they first met, when he was serving in the Coast Guard, to avoid going to Vietnam, and she was the secretary for his brother, who is running some sort of counter culture magazine. He longs for a career in politics and she wants to bring down the system. Yet when Fielding says he wants to be president some day, she smiles because he clearly means it.

These two characters from Scott Spencer's novel are politically polarized and these differences only grow as the two fall in love. They take turns accompanying each other to important social functions at which the other one become an embarrassment, before Sarah goes off and gets killed for her beliefs. Ten years later Fielding is given the opportunity to run in a special election for a seat in the U.S. Congress, as the handpicked choice of the governor and his chief political hack (Hal Holbrook). This is the first step to what Fielding has wanted his entire life, only Sarah sees it as a betrayal. True, Sarah has been dead ten years at this point, but that does not stop Fielding from first hearing and then seeing her.

Is Fielding going insane, is he being haunted, or is this some sort of sick game? Good question, but do not ask me the answer because I watched the movie. It is hard to spoil a movie when you are not sure what really happened at the end, although I could hazard a guess. Ultimately, the politics clashes between Fielding and Sarah are more interesting than their romance. You have to wonder how their relationship would have ended if she had not died, because sooner or later one of them would have had to blink. One of the strengths of "Waking the Dead" is that both of them are right and you think that if only they could find a way to work together great things could happen.

"Waking the Dead" is one of those titles that has a double meaning, for it applies to Fielding as much as it does to Sarah. That sense of ambiguity pervades Keith Gordon's 2000 film and certainly explains why the ending is so open to interpretation. But for me it does not quite work in the end, although Fielding's scene in his Congressional office works much better than his dinner with his family. Still, this is an interesting film for those who like to see film that try to play with an audience's mind (and which should be avoid like the plague by those who did enjoy "Fight Club" or "Memento").

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Politicians and true love?, 30 Jul 2007
By Hugh Garske (Maidenhead, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
A very ambitious politician is mentally hamstrung during election time as he cannot shake the memories of his true love. Over the course of his political ascension he slips from love-induced ecstasy to border-line insanity as he starts to question whether his one true love really died. As the audience, we are very cleverly dragged into this state of mind.

Connelly and Crudup's performances turn a decent script into a tremendous romance that only comes around once every few years. This movie was a lead-up to Connelly's Oscar for A Beautiful Mind and Crudup's Almost Famous.

There are some very memorable moments...seeing Crudup plead relatives for help to stave the onset of madness is both extremely uncomfortable yet astonishingly powerful. Watching the interaction between the two lead characters travelling home one night by train is a joy to watch with the scene allowing unbridled talent to do what they do best.

Through the clearing blur of Fielding's doubt we do eventually see that one person's love for humanity may influence someone that may influence hundreds of millions...and then the credits roll.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Love has no ending, 20 Oct 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Waking the Dead [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Few films these days seem to get the chemistry just right when suggesting romantic inter-play between two people since for every 'Betty Blue' there is some Hollywood film that dribbles in sentimantality.
Waking the Dead though is just one of those rare films that lets you see the light and reminds you of the intensity by which the joining of two people through love for each other can be.
True love can last a lifetime even after the other person has departed since we will always have memories of them.
In Waking the Dead it reminds us of this but also how we will always have images of them that will be reactivated by little moments in life and in people that we see that some how remind us of he or she.
In the trailer to the film there suggested a supernatural element (is she / isnt she really alive) but purposely in the film it is left up to the viewers imagination as to what is considered real or not real.
In every sense though this film is real and certainly the scenes involving Chilie's political turmoil in the 70's give it an added layer of texture of the cruel realities that life sometimes has to offer us but yet some things such as love cannot be destroyed.
Open your mind, turn out the lights and have no distraction. Just journey into this film and love it for all its time it gives you, then watch it on DVD and see all the deleted scenes. In these scenes (Which last over 40 minutes) it provides an added texture to the film and depth to characters that you care about and again reminds you of what seperates the good films from the bad films of this world.
A film with out flaws is a rare thing indeed and i am sure some New York critic would rip my review to shreds but all i know is what i see and what i felt with my heart. Enjoy!
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