THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE
This earnest, doleful film comes complete with flash-card intertitles that pant
out its themes ("Lust!" "Self-sacrifice!"). Kevin Spacey plays the title
character, a University of Texas philosophy professor and anti-death-penalty
activist. On death row for raping and murdering a fellow activist (Laura
Linney), Gale sells his story to an investigative TV reporter (Kate Winslet)
whose colleagues call her "Mike Wallace with PMS." That line gives Winslet one
of the two notes for her character, the other being the teary-eyed
discombobulation that comes over her as she races the clock to prove Gale's
innocence. One of Gale's books is called Dialogical Exhaustion. If that
means running out of things to say, the dialogical exhaustion in The Life of
David Gale comes not a moment too soon (not that the film isn't just as
clunky when the characters shut up). The script has its weaknesses; the
direction by Alan Parker is disastrous. A minor point of interest: this may be
the first American major-studio film to feature a lecture on Jacques Lacan (it
doesn't help). (130 minutes) At the Entertainment, Flagship, Opera House,
Providence Place Mall 16, and Showcase cinemas.
Issue Date: February 21 - 27, 2003
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