Real Estate Developer as Psycho Killer--Not a Huge Leap
Those who wish to preserve these fantasies should not see All Good Things, a movie with terrific performances, but that has very few other good things.
Talk about a misleading title.
Don’t misunderstand me: All Good Things is a very good film, a high-brow thriller about a sociopath and the people who make the unfortunate mistake of truly caring about him.
The best way I can describe it: It’s suspenseful like a Hitchcock movie, but most of Hitchcock’s movies end okay. This one does not.
Oh, it sure doesn't.
It’s never really made clear whether David Marks (Gosling) is always crazy or whether he gets progressively more unhinged. Would he have been okay had he stayed in Vermont, running a health food store with his cute, accommodating wife (Kirsten Dunst)? Or would he have turned into a homicidal maniac no matter what?
Gosling’s performance is chilling, all the more so for how vulnerable his character seems. (There are traces of a far less talented Mr. Ripley here.) There are only small glimpses of the sexy leading man that Gosling can play so well; mostly, he’s comes across like all the other repressed, amoral real estate developers wandering the streets of Manhattan.
Are they all just one unwanted pregnancy away from becoming serial killers?
Of course, the real kicker about All Good Things is that David Marks is a stand-in for Robert Durst, scion of a Manhattan real estate family. Bizarrely, the real Durst has never been convicted of actually murdering anybody.
He apparently lives in Florida now. Figures.
