Death and Life of John F Donovan
In 2006, 11 year old Rupert has been exchanging letters with television and movie star John F Donovan for five years, when Donovan dies of an overdose.
In 2017, now a famous actor himself, he sits for an interview to do a tell all on the friendship he shared, and the scandalous details of John’s life.
Direction
Quite sound direction from Xavier Dolan, who also wrote/produced and edited. I loved some of the snippets of cinematography of surrounding cities that the characters live in.
Cast/Characters
Kit Harington, of the Game of Thrones fame is John. Aside from the poor American accent he does an okay job. There are one or two moments that were a little on the nose with what it was trying to accomplish – which I will discuss soon.
Natalie Portman plays Sam, Rupert’s mother who only appears in the 2006 timeline.
She gets more to do in second half of the film, but I feel like she was either holding back on some of the heavier dramatic moments, or was handcuffed by poor direction. Her odd and poor parenting was aged, for 2006 as she was not supportive of her son.
Susan Sarandon has two key scenes, and one where she is seen as a drunk/dismissive/condescending parent, which mirrors Rupert’s relationship with his own mother. Her second prominent scene, her character suddenly does a 180, and this is never really explained – or expanded on.
Kathy Bates has a walk in/walk out role as Donovan’s agent who is a little underused, and doesn’t take her talent into consideration. She has a solid moment near the end with Donovan, but it doesn’t feel enough.
Screenplay/Setting/Themes
The 2017 interview with an adult Rupert (Ben Schnetzer) and Thandiwe Newton sets her up as one of the leads, but she is credited sixth.
A little bit of a miss with what it was trying to accomplish sadly. The ‘friendship’ between Rupert and John in 2006 feels very one sided, with it seemingly taking up a majority of Rupert’s identity – while it is barely even mentioned by adult John.
John’s closeted homosexuality and affairs take up the majority of his screen-time, and his second act ‘meltdown’ comes almost out of nowhere, and is done poorly. He then has a very odd moment between his brother and mother, that feels like it was written just for the trailer. It felt manipulative, and written to have a change of character of his mother.
The relationship between Portman’s Sam and Jacob Tremblay’s younger Rupert is – just bizarre – and Sam is written to be a very absent mother (not realising her son is conversing with JFD for five years?). The constant fights, and eventual reunion didn’t feel organic. I actually hated the reunion scene – where they hug in the rain to ‘Stand by Me’. It felt manipulative, and choreographed poorly.
Score/Soundtrack
As mentioned earlier, when used it gives forced emotion, and used in a manipulative manner.
Overall
Some flawed moments in the narrative, along with some overly forced emotion lets the film down. Some okay performances too, but once again – either the screenplay or direction notes didn’t work to the best of what the film should have done.
3/5
If you’re able to, please “buy me a coffee”