| |
 THE
LIFE OF DAVID GALE PLEADS
FOR ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY
How far will a person go to express commitment to a cause? Soldiers die in battle
for their country. Socrates drank the hemlock to protest thought control. In The
Life of David Gale, an opponent of the death penalty, David Gale
(played by Kevin Spacey), is on death row, with only a few days before his execution.
He has summoned Elizabeth "Bitsey" Bloom (played by Kate Winslet),
a journalist who served seven days in prison because she refused to disclose
her sources for a news story, to hear what he has to say. As the story unfolds,
Bitsey changes from skepticism to intense involvement with an apparently innocent
victim of the death penalty. Gale was a professor of philosophy at the University
of Texas, and we see him lecturing about Jacques Lacan's conundrum of the inability
of a desired fantasy to be satisfying once achieved. When he finishes his lecture,
and all students but one have left the classroom, Berlin (played by Rhona Mitra)
offers to do "anything" to get a good grade, but Gale turns her down.
When he leaves the classroom, he is joined by Constance Hallaway (played by Laura
Linney), who updates him on developments surrounding the latest Texas death row
inmate, a seventeen-year-old African American girl only a few days away from
her execution.
|
At a campus party, where Gale gets plastered, Berlin corners
him and directs him in a sex act that leaves possible
evidence of rape. Soon, he
is arrested for rape, his wife walks out on him taking his son, though he is
exonerated, presumably because the he-said she-said trial leaves reasonable doubt
about his guilt. Nevertheless, the university fires him, the national headquarters
of Deathwatch bans him from the Austin office, he drinks heavily, yet he continues
to socialize with Constance. One day, Constance is found dead, Gale is arrested,
and he is convicted and sentenced to death. On returning to her motel one night,
Bitsey finds a mysterious videotape; when she plays the tape, she concludes that
Constance committed suicide and was not murdered, but she obtains evidence too
late to stop Gale's execution. At this point, the plot takes twists and turns,
leaving some filmviewers confused, but they will not be in the dark about the
real purpose of the film--to abolish the death penalty. Despite approval of the
death penalty by 66 percent of the American people in public opinion polls, The
Life of David Gale provides ample arguments, even religious arguments,
to oppose a penalty that leaves the United States alone among the world's democracies.
Alan Parker, who has received Political Film Society awards for his Midnight
Express (1978) and Mississippi Burning (1988)
and a nomination for Come See the Paradise (1991),
receives another nomination for directing The Life of David Gale as
best film of 2003 in raising consciousness about the need to advance human rights.
MH
|
|
