Review of The Night Listener (2006) by Mark T — 25 Feb 2008

"The Night Listener" is a quiet, low-key film that manages to also be quite compelling and deeply unsettling as well. Robin Williams gives an understated yet powerful performance as Gabriel Noone, a lonely man whose life has gone off the tracks after his boyfriend, a much younger man to whom he had been deeply devoted, leaves him after seven years together. You see, Gabriel's boyfriend Jess was a man who thought he was dying, having been diagnosed with AIDS years ago. With new treatments developed in the last few years, though, Jess found that he would be able to live a much longer life than he anticipated and left Gabriel to explore new avenues in his life, gaining experiences he thought he would never have.

This leaves a hole in Gabriel's life, a hole that is filled by young Pete Logand. Also suffering from AIDS, Pete has been told that he has very little time left. Gabriel finds someone in Pete that he can comfort, as he comforted Jess in what he thought was his final years. Gabriel acts like both a father and a big brother to the boy, developing a strong bond with him, and the possibility, brought up by Jess, that Pete is a fabrication concocted by his adopted mother Donna sets him down a path of obsession that causes his life to spiral out of control, a path which feels as natural as it is disturbing.

Once Gabriel makes the trip to Wisconsin to try and find the truth regarding Pete, the film becomes very eerie, very unnerving. Whether or not Pete Logand exists is kept up in the air, and the tension mounts as we see how unstable his mother Donna really is. If Pete Logand exists, where is he? Donna's statements about his whereabouts become more and more implausible as Gabriel's search intensifies. If Pete Logand doesn't exist, who is the boy in the picture and the video that Donna shows Gabriel? What would be Donna's reason for making such a thing up? What kind of danger is Gabriel putting himself in? I was surprised at how on edge I was throughout the film, surprised and delighted, and Toni Collette's excellent performance as Donna contributed a lot in creating this tense atmosphere.

I have one main gripe with the film, however, and that is its lack of resolution. Once I reached the end of the film, I was a bit disappointed that more information was not provided. The ending was well done and was as unsettling as the rest of the movie was, and I suppose not giving me all of the answers was one of the reasons the film stayed with me so much afterwards as I puzzled over the questions left unanswered and tried to fill in the missing pieces. Regardless, I felt unsatisfied, and just a little more information would've gone a long way in sating my appetite.