The Death & Life of John F. Donovan

Xavier Dolan's movies always invoke mixed emotions. One thing is for sure in all his movies thatchy are not straight forward. There is a whole lot of read between the lines and he does try to invoke complex relationships like never before. Sometimes these things work and other times they don't. Trying to comprehend a strange relationship between an actor and an 11 year old child, eventually according to me, this film ended up being a coherent mess despite some of the very biggest names starring in this film like Kit Harrington, Natalie Portman, Susan Sarandon etc.

A young 11 year old boy Rupert who lives with his mother in London is obsessed with a handsome television star, John F. Donovan. The film starts with grown up Donovan who has just released a book with his letter correspondence with the actor when he was a child. Through two time frames between flashbacks and current times, we get to see the story of how this friendship blossomed. We see Rupert's strange relationship with his mother as a child, which is contrasted by Donovan’s distant relationship with his own neurotic mother. Rupert is bullied in school being called names while Donovan through his letters bears out his heart to the young child. He is dealing with his sexuality, and secret romance and affairs with me while having his best friend as his girlfriend. He is torn because show business won't accept him for who he is. We see the gradual breakdown that happens to Donovan over a period of time. Donovan's life is always under scrutiny for his sexuality, male prostitutes etc and when the whole letter correspondence goes public with an 11 year old, it sparks a whole new controversy leading to this corrfespndecen stopping, until much later when he writes one final letter to Rupert before apparently taking his now life. But this letter and everything else helped Rupert to believe in who he is and live life as an openly gay man.

Kit Harrington's portrayal of a messed up Donavan is very mixed. He is magnetic yet very empty and bland at times. We are given a very cursory glance of the inner demons he is dealing with (it is bipolar, psychiatry or is everything related to him not being able to live an openly gay life), but we never feel more than curious about his emotions because they are buried far too deep beneath the surface for us an audience to access. Big actresses like Portman and Susan Sarandon as the two mothers get on with their scenes but neither of their characters are explained and set properly to explain the weird behavior. There are many times where you feel that scenes jump from one place to another without connection. Apparently the original edit by Dolan was over 4 hours long, so something really bad must have happened with the version that I saw which was still over 2 hours long. The kid's dialogues are so long and with such heavy words that I wonder if any child speaks like that. Also, I mentioned before, there is no real connection between Rupert and Donovan which would make us emotionally connect with their anguish. Two different people but somehow connected emotionally. All their correspondence happens on paper, which actually at one point, made me think if Rupert had all made it up and if anything was real. Will, the guy who Donovan eventually falls in love with , is also a very half baked story that is barely scratched. Even though the film feels long, there were still so many areas where the characters were not developed and the director's self indulgence with his kind of cinema was very apparent. It's a mish-mash of a whole lot of things that the director wanted to tackle in this film, but sadly it comes out as a convoluted gay coming out drama, and by end of which you question, what was the whole point of it. 

How does a star's struggle to come out in open about his sexuality help a young boy to actually accept himself just with correspondence of letters. It doesn't even make sense. I am not the biggest fan of Dolan's work but I always look forward to it ever since his debut feature at the young age of 19. The man has a lot to learn. This film, despite some real big names, is soppy, messy which never gets the required emotional depth that a story like this should. (3.5/10)