All Good Things

“All Good Things” proves a tricky film to review. It’s hard to say it’s enjoyable, because it’s not. It’s hard to say it’s bad, because it’s not, “All Good Things” is a fairly predictable story of one man, David Marks, descent into insanity.

All the big moments in this film are marked with a big ole cliché-o-meter. The second we see Kirstin Dunst smile at Ryan Gosling, the entire audience knows she’s dying. If you don’t, you haven’t seen enough movies.

David’s tumble into madness features the usual road stops. He gets violent then apologizes, he takes it out on the adorable dog, we see him sit, disaffected, in his office as the day passes him by, naturally in time lapse. We even get the “ole’ brunette wearing a blonde wig as a disguise trick”. We’ve all been here. I mean, save for the performances, this script could have found its way to Lifetime Movie Network with a catchy title like “Heir to Murder”.

Movies like this need to be about the journey, not the conclusion. Characters need to pop and be interesting and compelling, speak to more than one note, and we only really get that from Ryan Gosling’s character, David, who is pretty messed up, talks to himself, routinely smokes doobie, and, when young, witnessed his mother commit suicide while his father casually watched on. Other than that particular character note, everything else seems like it was written off the cuff.

Take for example the opening scene, we see an SUV park near a bridge in the wee hours of the morning. Throughout the film, we cut to what appears to be a woman taking out a bloody jigsaw and trash bags filled with body parts, and dropping them into the lake. This scene is misleading in about 3 different ways, and when the big twist came 75 percent of the way into the movie, I laughed out loud.

But, here’s the kicker. It’s a true story. It tells us this up front, too, so while all these annoying, awful, been-there-done-that, events happen, they’re tainted with a “Don’t’ blame us, it happened it this way” vibe, that left me itching to get to my computer to fact check reality versus fiction.

And as it turns out the reality is fairly different from the fiction, names and events were changed, and a great deal of the film is entirely speculation, thus allowing me to say with a clear conscience that the clichés such as hair pulling and Oedipus complexes are tired.

See, docudramas have a tricky road to hoe. In a similar fictionalized true story like “The Social Network” where everyone knows what’s going to happen, the movie entertains us by giving us character moments, giving us depth to the proceedings, and battering us with subtext.

“All Good Things” seems content to just throw us a twist or two. I envision the screen writer sitting in the back of a theater on premier night, eagerly rubbing his hands together, excited to exclaim “Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?” every chance he got as the film chugga chuggaed to it’s wholly unsatisfying conclusion that kind of made me wish I had read the wikipedia article instead of seeing the movie.

However, the performances nearly save the film, and it’s wonderfully acted. Kirstin Dunst redeems herself in my eyes from just a wretched performance in Spider-Man 3 a few years back. Frank Langella makes a one note character compelling, and Ryan Gosling follows up “Lars and The Real Girl” with a performance that’s, well…unsettling.

“Unsettling” is this movie’s soon to be forgotten legacy. While the cliché’s and melodrama are scoff worthy, the reality presented in the film nests in your brain because it’s real.

“All Good Things” will force you to ponder the last twenty minutes of the film, while leaving the theater. Then, when walking down the sidewalk, kind of creeped out, afraid to make eye contact with strangers or bus drivers, too busy wondering about the things a diseased mind is capable of, you’ll realize “All Good Things” got under your skin. I’m just not sure you want it there.