Watching 'The Dying Gaul' reminded me of watching 'The New Age' (Michael Tolkin, 1994). Both share the same facility for 'false grip' that keeps the viewer attending to the action while at the same time mentally numbing one into a false sense that there is any meaning to the whole thing. Perhaps that is the key, referring to the root of the poisonous plant found in the chic ultra-fab Malibu seaside manse's garden which, in the long run (spoilers begin here) acts as a deus ex machina at the end the movie. When the end does arrive I thought, of course, it had to be, what else could possibly have happened to bring this lolloping turkey to a conclusion. The script is a mish-mash of Buddha/Werner Erhard philosophical self-help and becomes a bit eye-rolling at times.<br /><br />Having said all that, I enjoyed many aspects of 'The Dying Gaul', not least of which were the performances of Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard. But, like Judy Davis and Peter Weller in 'The New Age', all their great gifts of reaction to the words cannot mitigate the nebulous quality of the entire project. What IS the point? Is it another Gay Rage film, taking dark-humored revenge on the closeted bi-sexual married couples that abound across the landscape, or is Robert Sandrich (the screenwriter) just another serial killer....? Who knows. It is this mysteriousness that several of my friends were intrigued by and spent many hours discussing and reaching no conclusions. One of my film buff chums went way out on a wine-driven limb about how it was about the Reality of Cyberspace and all kinds of flapdoodle about melding karmas in chat rooms or some such stuff that is posited by the Sarsgaard character early in the film. Then the conversation veered off into other theories as to what this movie was about. When THAT happens in a conversation about a film I become immediately suspicious of its basic integrity. In other words, it is pretty much a pile of cow pats. Only a really great director can pull off such cinematic enigmas; I'm thinking of Peter Weir's masterpiece 'Picnic of Hanging Rock'.<br /><br />There is thinking and there is Thinking. 'The Dying Gaul' calls up the lesser of the two, amounting in the end to cinematic wool-gathering, rather like this comment is becoming, so I won't continue much longer.<br /><br />Basically I think this movie is a woman's revenge movie that backfires dreadfully. But as all the main characters are fairly reprehensible it had no emotional impact at all, it sort of went "phut" at the end when I think I was supposed to be devasted or something. Or perhaps this was part of the black humor bit that I didn't get. But I don't see much funniness in the deaths of children. If 'The Dying Gaul' is someone's idea of 'Black Humor' then I have definitely lived too long. <br /><br />This is a bitter, cruel, nasty movie that provokes puzzlement but little follow-up interest, at least for me. But worth viewing for Clarkson and Sargaard's performances and Steve Reich's interesting score.