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 ragonfly is the kind of movie that gives me fits.
It's not all that great, but it's not all that bad, either. It's mediocre, but
it moves at such a nice pace and the payoff is very good, but then it's, well,
so mediocre. I hate movies like Dragonfly because they're so hard for me
to classify my feelings towards them. Do I like it? Do I hate it? Do I like it a
little, hate it a little? See what I mean?
Kevin Costner headlines Dragonfly as Joe Darrow, a
doctor married to doctor Emily (Susanna Thompson). The couple is living a good
life when Emily decides to leave the country and go down to the jungles of South
America to do some humanitarian work, all this while she's in her second
trimester of pregnancy. Joe, of course, tries to talk her out of it, but Emily,
being the good "we must heal the world" doctor that she is, goes
anyway. It turns out Joe is right, and Emily is killed in a rockslide while
trying to flee a coming storm down there in no-longer-sunny South America. Joe
doesn't quite know how to grieve because Emily's body was never recovered, and
in short order strange things, visions, and images start to appear to Joe,
convincing him that Emily is somehow trying to contact him from beyond the
grave. Is it really Emily or is Joe just losing his mind?
The funniest thing about Dragonfly is just how cruel
and prone to (what I like to call) assholism the secondary characters are. You'd
think that after Joe has lost his wife, and her body is still out there
somewhere, that people would cut the man some slack. But noooo. Not only does
Joe's hospital administrator (Joe Morton) act like a total jerk, but everyone
else seems to be getting into the act. Joe's family and friends try to ambush
him with a grief counselor who makes general "soothing" statements;
his neighbor thinks he's losing his mind the first time he tells her about his
Emily-related encounters. The cops hassle him, a priest calls the cops on him,
and poor Joe can only turn to two kids who have both had near-death experiences
for help and comfort.
Everyone else seems completely determined to help Joe dig
further into the abyss of insanity. Of course it doesn't help that Joe is losing
his composure faster than a bowling ball going down the gutter. Not only is Joe
spending way too much time at the hospital, but he's seeing squiggly cross
symbols everywhere.
So is Joe going crazy or is Emily really trying to contact
him? Obviously it's Emily trying to contact him, or else this type of movie
would be a waste of time. Movies like Dragonfly never really gives you
any reason to doubt that someone's trying to speak from beyond the grave. That
is one of the reasons why Dragonfly is such a familiar, and by now
repetitive, movie. There is nothing special here that we haven't seen before,
and after setting up Emily's pregnancy before her death, it becomes grossly
obvious why she's trying to reach him and direct him back to the South American
jungle where she perished.
I have to give credit to the much-maligned Kevin Costner,
who does an excellent job here as Joe. Costner's Joe is spiraling out of control
so fast and so drastically that it's sometimes humorous to see, although I'm
sure it wasn't funny to Joe. The normally cool and collected Joe starts to act
like a spaz, doing odd things and visiting the hospitals at all hours of the
night. Costner plays the character as vulnerable, something that comes through
very well especially when we see just how in control and detached Joe is in the
beginning. The quick unraveling of a man who isn't sure if his dead wife is
trying to speak to him or if he's losing his mind was a treat to watch.
The supporting cast of Dragonfly doesn't really have
much to do except come in every now and then to let Joe know that Emily is dead
and that Joe is going crazy. Again, they're so unsympathetic to his plight that
it's a riot watching them doubt him and consider locking the poor man up for
various reasons. Kathy Bates shows up as Miriam, Joe and Emily's neighbor, a
woman who offers some not-so-sage advice to Joe, and at one point accuses him of
having lots of mental problems. And she's his good friend! Tom Shadyac's
direction is competent but doesn't wow. The cinematography is too dark at times,
but the execution of Dragonfly as a whole comes across as average.
So is Dragonfly a good film? I don't know. I don't
think it's a great film, but I also don't think it's all that bad. It's mildly
entertaining to see Joe slowly lose his mind and it's hilarious to see how
everyone is so intent on telling the man that his wife is dead and that he's
going nuts and should just "snap out of it." In fact, I recall about a
dozen times when someone tells Joe that his wife is dead and that he should
"get over it." Gee, with friends like these...
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