Dragonfly
*
Cinema Releases - June 7, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. USA.
103 minutes. Directed by Tom Shadyac. Written by Brandon Camp, David Seltzer,
Mike Thompson; from a story by Camp and Thompson. Starring Kevin Costner,
Joe Morton, Ron Rifkin, Linda Hunt, Susanna Thompson, Jacob Vargas, Kathy
Bates, Matt Craven, Casey Biggs, Leslie Hope.
"Dragonfly" had me sinking in my
seat. It's like watching someone with a slit throat gurgle blood for 103
minutes. Nothing in this movie works -- not the story, not the acting, not
the music cues, not even the blocking.
Kevin Costner stars as a doctor whose pregnant
wife died while doing aid work in South America. She was his soul mate, so
we're told. Her favourite creature was the dragonfly; she even had a little
birthmark on her back that looked just like one. Costner spends a lot of
time moping and talking about dragonflies, and then he starts to have dreams
about the creatures, and then his patients start waking up from near-death
experiences and obsessively drawing the things.
The dragonfly sketches look, as one character
puts it, "Like crosses made out of jello." Costner is convinced they're signs
from beyond the grave, and that his wife is trapped in a beam of sunlight
trying to send him some kind of spiritual message. He wanders around desperately,
speaking in a tome that's somehow both emphatic and whiny, shouting, "It's
Emily! It's Emily!" at everything that moves and a lot of things that do
not.
Great actors like Joe Morton and Ron Rifkin stand
in the wings, offering clichés about how Costner has to take a break,
and put his life back together, and yada yada yada. They look on his claims
of supernatural intervention with scientific cynicism. "I thought you were
the guy who doesn't believe in heaven," says Rifkin. Costner's response:
"This isn't heaven -- it's rainbows!"
The most laughable scene in the film takes place
when the supernatural messages get to Costner's home. Little dragonfly squiggles
appear all over the windows, the light starts switching itself on and off,
and Costner's parrot goes nuts -- squawking, flapping, trashing the kitchen,
landing on its back and stopping for a moment of dramatic exhaustion. Now
I can see why people thought I was too hard on "The Mothman
Prophecies".
It all ends in South America, with Costner staring
into the distance, sighing, "It's Emily... it's Emily...." under his breath
and jumping into a river to try and connect with the half-dead world, or
something. The final shot features him holding a baby as if it were a relic
of God, and watching this I was thinking, hey, if only the kid would pee
on him, this whole experience would be worthwhile.
We have no reason to care about anything that
goes on in "Dragonfly". Emotions are forced. Costner's grief is too laughable
to be moving. The cinematography is lacking in strong contrasts, so its attempts
to capture moody darkness seem flat and dull. Contemplative shots are whisked
away by impatient pacing.
The director, Tom Shadyac, seems to be craving
approval -- once upon a time he directed comedies like "Ace Ventura" and
"The Nutty Professor", but this is his second dramatic project in a row,
and I'm sensing a bid for respectability. The problem with "Dragonfly" and
"Patch Adams" is that they're grotesquely uninvolving films with empty
screenplays and inept handling. Whose bright idea was it to put a camera
in Shadyac's hands in the first place?
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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