Waking the Dead is a 2000 mystery drama film directed by Keith Gordon and starring Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly. The screenplay by Robert Dillon is based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Scott Spencer. Plot The film flashes back and forth between the 1970s and 1980s and centers on the relationship between Fielding Pierce, a young Coast Guard officer with political ambitions, and idealistic Roman Catholic Sarah Williams, who is drawn to programs designed to better the lives of the underprivileged and has mixed feelings about his career goals. In the opening scene, Fielding sees a television news program reporting Sarah's death in a Minneapolis car bombing following a church-organized excursion to Chile to feed the poor and organize resistance to the oppressive Pinochet dictatorship. He never quite recovers from the news, and he finds himself increasingly haunted by the past, in which the couple were as romantically close as they were politically apart, divided by his desire to work within the system and her conviction that the system is the root of all evil. His obsession with Sarah slowly puts his career, forthcoming marriage, and sanity in jeopardy. The question of whether or not Sarah actually was killed remains unresolved as Fielding's sister Caroline reports having seen her on the street some years later and Fielding himself supposedly meets her after being elected to the United States Congress, only to wonder afterwards if she merely was a hallucination. Cast Billy Crudup as Fielding Pierce Jennifer Connelly as Sarah Williams Hal Holbrook as Isaac Green Janet McTeer as Caroline Pierce Paul Hipp as Danny Pierce Molly Parker as Juliet Beck Sandra Oh as Kim John Carroll Lynch as Father Mileski Production The film was shot in Montreal, Québec, with a budget of $8.5 million, between February 4, 1998 and April 6, 1998. The character portrayed by Ed Harris was eliminated from the completed film, although he is seen briefly on a television screen. Sandra Oh appears in one short scene and has little dialogue; a longer scene with her was deleted but is included as an extra feature in the DVD release. Soundtrack "Snow Come Down" performed by Lori Carson "A Case of You" performed by Joni Mitchell "Maggie May" performed by Rod Stewart "Help Me Somebody" performed by Brian Eno and David Byrne "Mercy Street" performed by Peter Gabriel Reception Waking the Dead received mixed