Waking the Dead (the movie not the TV series) is one of my favorite movies. Starring Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly, it is the story of a initially well-intentioned, compassionate but ambitious, politician running for Congress. All is going well in the polls as he slowly sells his soul to the devil to get elected when suddenly the ghost of his dead significant other appears. Crudup’s character slowly loses it as Connelly’s character forces him remember why he got into politics in the first place. As Crudup's character slowly loses his grip on reality (it's a fabulous performance), drawn deeper and deeper into this delusion (or haunting), he is also eventually redeemed, becoming a better man and the "man of the people" that always lurked beneath. Of course, returning from the grave to rescue and redeem a loved one is a literary staple, whether in fiction, film or television.
I was reminded of Waking the Dead while watching the premiere of the new CBS series A Gifted Man. Starring critically-acclaimed stage and screen actor Patrick Wilson (Phantom of the Opera) as brilliant, mega-successful neurosurgeon Michael Holt. We learn in the first few moments of Gifted’s pilot episode that Michael is rude to nurses, insensitive to his (apparently long-suffering) secretary Rita (Margo Martindale, Steel Magnolias), and seems generally in the surgery business for its material rewards. Although he is the only real male presence in his nephew’s troubled life, he refuses to do anything but throw money at the problem. Basically, the doctor is a grade-A ass of a human being.
Into his life one evening walks ex-wife Anna (Jennifer Ehle, The King’s Speech). It is a seemingly chance meeting, but Michael is ecstatic that their paths have crossed again, despite the fact that it was he who walked out on their marriage several years earlier.
Article comments
1 - Nancy
House could make a cameo on this.
2 - Barbara Barnett
That would be interesting!