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Film Review: The Night Listener
Cue movie-preview voice:...In a world where Pirates of The Caribbean 2 can break box office records, it’s almost a given that smaller independent films are going to slip through the cracks. Given the state of the world these days, there really is no contest between a finely crafted intimate drama and watching Johnny Depp swordfight an octopus.
Which brings us to The Night Listener, a film that begins promisingly, has its moments of inspiration, but sadly ends as a total bore, having left the loose strands of an interesting story behind to focus on a labored twist-ending. The film is based on real events, yet ironically never decides what it’s really about.
Robin Williams plays Gabriel Noone, an emotionally distraught writer and radio host who receives a manuscript of a memoir written by a horrifically abused child, Pete Logand (Rory Culkin). Pete calls Gabriel to talk about the book, and the two form a long-distance friendship. Pete, who is dying of AIDS, often communicates through his guardian, played by Toni Collette. Gabriel’s estranged boyfriend posits the notion that something isn’t quite right about this pair, and soon enough, Gabriel finds himself in Madison, Wisconsin, searching for his young friend.
The Night Listener presents some terrifying scenarios involving child-porn rings, vengeful parents, small-town conspiracies, and strange psychological disorders; yet, these horrors go up in smoke almost as soon as they’re presented, having never existed in the film’s reality in the first place. Director Patrick Stettner, who directs most of the film with sufficient intensity, somehow manages to skirt around a climax and segue straight into a drawn-out denouement during which characters talk about what happened and how crazy it all was—this is literally a variation of the classically lame twist, “...it was all a dream!” The actual existence of Pete Logand, the central figure of the story, turns out to be a complete non-point.
Author Armistead Maupin, who based the story on real events (Gabriel is his alter ego), wants to twist pathology-of-the-week material into a mystery-thriller format, which in this case just doesn’t work. The mere fact that a story is based on real events doesn’t necessarily mean it works as filmed entertainment, because real life is full of arbitrary, illogical events. We go to the movies as a retreat from reality, to watch a story that is designed to make sense and appeal to our sense of narrative symmetry. The Night Listener begins so promisingly, and carries such strong performances (Collette in particular is wonderfully unhinged) that it’s a shame to watch it turn to mush in the last ten minutes.
Speaking about his writing process early in the film, Gabriel says, “Like a magpie, I take all the shiny things from my life and leave out the boring stuff.” The filmmakers would have been wise to heed that advice, because the movie they came up with turns out to be a major-league jerk-around.
