ALL THINGS GOOD is a polished little film based on a true story that while it may not have the visual gruesome detail of the usual thriller tropes of films, it is terrifying in its presentation of personality variations that produce a shuddering reaction on a purely intellectual level for the audience. It is both a love story and a missing persons/murder mystery based on a still unsolved case that continues to haunt New York investigators and reporters and detectives.
What writers Marcus Hinchey and Marc Smerling have created from known and newly discovered facts, speculation and court records results in a psychological examination of a powerful New York family, obsession, love and loss. The film relates incidents that began in 1972 and end in 2003 and at this time the truth is still unknown. Director Andrew Jarecki uses a superb cast and a fine sense of voice-over narration to interweave the puzzling history with the gradual dissolution of each of the characters involved.
Sanford Marks (Frank Langella) is one of the wealthiest owners of Manhattan real estate, the current head of a family that has long dominated the New York scene with its power and money. Marks is aging and is relying on his son David (Ryan Gosling) to take over the family business: he sends David out to the brothels, and filthy hotels and porn houses to collect rent. David is reticent to be a part of his father’s business: he is a deeply disturbed young man, having witnessed his mother’s suicide leap as a child. David meets a tenant in one of the properties – Katie McCarthy (Kirsten Dunst) who longs to go to medical school but at present has no income to support that dream. The chemistry between the two is magnetic and despite David’s father’s objection that Katie is not of ‘their kind of people’, David decides to marry Katie and move to Vermont to open a Health Foods store – a move that makes the couple ecstatic, but is financed by Sanford Marks who eventually convinces David to sell his haven and move to New York to stay with the family business.
In their Manhattan home (and in their country lake front home!) the couple flourishes until Katie mentions she’d like to have children – a force that drives David back into violent behavior resulting form his witnessing his mother’s suicide: David can’t understand why Katie would want anything but the obvious life of wealth they enjoy. The shell is cracked and the subsequent events include Katie becoming pregnant only to be forced by David to terminate the pregnancy, Katie’s disappearance after uncovering the facts about the sources of wealth of the family, David’s descent into drugs and irresponsible behavior, and ultimately his leaving New York for Galveston, Texas where he lives a life disguised as a woman, his only friend being another old runaway Melvin Bump (Philip Baker Hall) who David engages to do away with a ‘problem confidant’ (Lilly Rabe), after which Bump is killed and dissected and tossed into the river. The murders are never solved nor is the mystery of Katie’ disappearance. A trial (the source of the voice-over throughout the film has been the lawyer’s interrogation of David in the year 2003) fails to resolve anything and the film ends with the message that David Marks is at present a real estate broker in Florida.
Frank Langella is superb as the heartless father who drives his family like cattle in the quest of power and wealth. Ryan Gosling offer a multifaceted performance of the deeply disturbed David and is match by Kirsten Dunst’s bravura performance as Katie, the simple bright girl whose life is quashed by a powerful family’s sickness. The brilliant cast, including the performances by Philip Baker Hall and Lilly Rabe – daughter of the deceased Jill Clayburgh), has excellent cameo roles by Diane Venora, Trini Alvarado, David Margulies, Nick Offerman and many more. This is a tough film to watch because at the bottom of it all is that it is true and the cases are unsolved. It makes us cringe but it is a very fine film.
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Since I am not Chinese, or of Chinese extraction, City of Life and Death has a different resonance for me. I know of the Nanking massacre (for which, it has to be said, the Japanese have yet to apologise or even properly acknowledge) from my own interest in history, as well as the John Rabe story (the Nazi who helped save thousands of Chinese civilians, until recalled to Germany since Hitler did not wish to upset his Japanese allies).
