The Secret Lives of Dentists

Rating:
Summary: the ache of marriage
Review: "I am 38 years old, and it seems to be that I've arrived at the age of grief. My wife is seeing another man, and I don't kick her out of the house. She doesn't kick me out. I can't imagine kicking anyone out of the house. Do you kick them? Or do you... kick them?"

Campbell Scott has always been one of my favorite actors, and his performance as a somewhat repressed, subdued and not very socially adept dentist is excellent and compelling. It slowly dawns on his character, Dave Hurst, that his wife is seeing another man. The distance between his wife, Dana (who is also a partner in their shared dental practice), and him grows while both try to carry on with their lives as normal. Sadly I think the movie with its deliberate and slow pace reflects accurately the non-communicative state of many marriages. People become
so busy and wrapped up in the daily grind (in the case of the Hursts, they have three small children, none of whom seem to like their mother very much). Dave struggles not only with expressing himself but with the question of why his wife
looks at him, as he puts it, "with regret" rather than with desire. Dave's frustrations, questions and suspicions finally boil over when he treats a rather belligerent, cantankerous patient (Denis Leary), and Dave imagines the patient is following him around, provoking him and making him think about his relationship to Dana.

Dave is not interested in confrontation with Dana because he is not interested in taking action. He fears the adverse consequences if he were to confront her. What if Dana wanted to leave him for someone else? What if their marriage split up? He was more willing to accept doing nothing to maintain a strained status quo. As the relationship becomes more strained, and as Dave personifies many of the qualities he imagines his belligerent patient to have, there are physical repercussions in the family... the entire family gets violently ill, with the
oldest daughter manifesting ongoing symptoms of nausea brought on by stress and anxiety (which is she clearly sensing in the household).

Overall I felt this movie was well done. The performances were excellent (cannot really complain about Hope Davis and Campbell Scott), the mundane quality of daily life and the sometimes silent suffering and lack of understanding that accompanies the tedium is captured here. As Dana comes alive in the beginning in
a community theater musical, and the let down that comes when the production ends, she embodies a person emotionally distraught at having lost some kind of passion. Most telling, she cries about the end of this period of artistic expression, freedom, and Dave does not notice. Dave and Dana share a
conversation at one point in the movie about whether they are really friends with each other. Dana always felt their marriage would grow wider and larger, but she only saw that it became smaller. They admitted that they scared each other, but they never really dealt with their personal issues. The subtle
portrayal of marriage and its failures as well as the failures of communication are well developed here, and for this reason, the film is a good choice.

Rating:
Summary: Scenes from a Modern Marriage
Review: "The Secret Lives of Dentists" documents a seemingly typical marriage between two dentists, played by Campbell Scott and Hope Davis, who are in joint practice. Their marriage seems ideal, with their successful practice, two homes, and three beautiful children. However, the idyllic appearance of their relationship belies the festering problems brought on by years of neglect and passivity.

Director Alan Rudolph is known for highly stylized films that examine the complications of relationships, such as "Choose Me" and "Afterglow." What his works often lacks in realism, he makes up for by eliciting gorgeous performances from his cast. Scott brings great subtlety to his character - a submissive man who refuses to fight for his crumbling marriage. Davis is also excellent, managing to make her character sympathetic despite her actions.

Overall, "The Secret Lives of Dentists" is perhaps the best Rudolph film I've seen, and the script and acting is often quite perceptive. However, it ultimately falls flat in several ways. In particular, the film takes an ugly turn with the character played by Denis Leary - a devil's advocate type who attempts to goad Scott into action. The movie really loses traction with every scene in which Leary plays a key role. In addition, the tone of the film is strangely aloof, and I found myself struggling to connect with the characters or become involved emotionally. In sum, the film is an above average and quirky look at modern marriages with some very good acting.

Extras - Plenty of extras including an episode from the Sundance Channel's show "Anatomy of a Scene," which dissects the opera scene.

Rating:
Summary: the ache of marriage
Review: "I am 38 years old, and it seems to be that I've arrived at the age of grief. My wife is seeing another man, and I don't kick her out of the house. She doesn't kick me out. I can't imagine kicking anyone out of the house. Do you kick them? Or do you... kick them?"

Campbell Scott has always been one of my favorite actors, and his performance as a somewhat repressed, subdued and not very socially adept dentist is excellent and compelling. It slowly dawns on his character, Dave Hurst, that his wife is seeing another man. The distance between his wife, Dana (who is also a partner in their shared dental practice), and him grows while both try to carry on with their lives as normal. Sadly I think the movie with its deliberate and slow pace reflects accurately the non-communicative state of many marriages. People become
so busy and wrapped up in the daily grind (in the case of the Hursts, they have three small children, none of whom seem to like their mother very much). Dave struggles not only with expressing himself but with the question of why his wife
looks at him, as he puts it, "with regret" rather than with desire. Dave's frustrations, questions and suspicions finally boil over when he treats a rather belligerent, cantankerous patient (Denis Leary), and Dave imagines the patient is following him around, provoking him and making him think about his relationship to Dana.

Dave is not interested in confrontation with Dana because he is not interested in taking action. He fears the adverse consequences if he were to confront her. What if Dana wanted to leave him for someone else? What if their marriage split up? He was more willing to accept doing nothing to maintain a strained status quo. As the relationship becomes more strained, and as Dave personifies many of the qualities he imagines his belligerent patient to have, there are physical repercussions in the family... the entire family gets violently ill, with the
oldest daughter manifesting ongoing symptoms of nausea brought on by stress and anxiety (which is she clearly sensing in the household).

Overall I felt this movie was well done. The performances were excellent (cannot really complain about Hope Davis and Campbell Scott), the mundane quality of daily life and the sometimes silent suffering and lack of understanding that accompanies the tedium is captured here. As Dana comes alive in the beginning in
a community theater musical, and the let down that comes when the production ends, she embodies a person emotionally distraught at having lost some kind of passion. Most telling, she cries about the end of this period of artistic expression, freedom, and Dave does not notice. Dave and Dana share a
conversation at one point in the movie about whether they are really friends with each other. Dana always felt their marriage would grow wider and larger, but she only saw that it became smaller. They admitted that they scared each other, but they never really dealt with their personal issues. The subtle
portrayal of marriage and its failures as well as the failures of communication are well developed here, and for this reason, the film is a good choice.

Rating:
Summary: American Beauty but realistic
Review: A tough look at a tough marriage. Amercian Beauty covered similar ground but was played for laughs. There are laughs in Dentists to be sure. But, most of those come in fantasy sequences. The day to day stuff is In the Bedroom quality.

...

Rating:
Summary: Quirky look at a family in crisis
Review: Alan Rudolph has directed some very interesting, though little-known films over the last twenty years... In his latest, The Secret Lives of Dentists, Rudolph mostly succeeds in creating an offbeat comedy-drama about a husband and wife team of dentists. Campbell Scott and Hope Davis play Dave and Dana Hurst, who lead a fairly typical, if hectic upper middle class existence. In addition to being a dentist, Dana is an opera singer. They have three young girls, who take up a large part of their nonworking time. Much of the film, in fact, focuses on the daily challenges of a couple raising children. While this gets tedious at times (there is a twenty or so minute segment where we get to see the whole family throwing up as they suffer from flu), it manages to convey something, obvious as it is, that other movies tend to overlook. Namely, that whatever else may be going on in their lives, children take up a great deal of parents' time and energy. The conventional fabric of Dave's life starts to unravel when two unrelated incidents occur one day. First, he sees his wife in what appears to be a romantic embrace with another man. Secondly, he is harassed in public by an obnoxious disgruntled patient (Denis Leary, who is his usual wise-cracking self). From this point on, the movie turns surreal, as Leary becomes a walking hallucination in Dave's life, dispensing unwanted advice and providing comic relief from the otherwise heavy mood. The transitions between comedy and melodrama are sometimes rather sudden, but both work well in their own way, so the imbalance doesn't hurt the film. As in many of Rudolph's films, Secret Lives of Dentists uses a sharp focus to illuminate the small events in the lives of a few people. Everything takes place over the course of a few days, and not all that much actually happens. We mostly watch Dave's struggle to maintain his sanity while dealing with his conflicted feelings, such as love and anger towards his wife, devotion and impatience with his children. The film is slow paced, so if your movie attention span is short, it may not be for you. Yet I found it to be an original, funny and often touching look at a family trying to keep itself together.

Rating:
Summary: 3 1/2 Stars: Nabucco in Scarsdale
Review: Alan Rudolph's "The Secret Lives of Dentists" aspires to the suburban angst of Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" but doesn't have the glistening surface values or the gut wrenching emotionality to do so.
The film begins interestingly enough with David Hurst (Campbell Scott) going on about the intricacies of dental work that makes us squirm and how dental work or going to the dentist reflects and mirrors our lives. His wife, Dana (Hope Davis, never looking more beautiful and sexy) is also a dentist and they both share the same office. Where Dana is expansive and even sings in the chorus of a small town version of Verdi's "Nabco," David is quiet, reserved and prefers to stay home with the children.
Since David takes it for granted that Dana is having an affair, the central conceit is not whether Dana is, but with whom which dissipates what little intrigue the film has. It is interesting that David, though upset about this, is also prideful that someone else would find his wife attractive. David also has his own personal Greek chorus in the guise of Slater (Denis Leary), a patient, who interjects snide comments as he sees fit and whom only David can see or hear.
By the time that Dana admits her indiscretion we have been inflicted with two hours of David's whining, crying jags, breaking pottery and a bout with the flu, so we don't care much.
"TSLOD" problem is one of tone: is it a swoony 50's style high drama or an adult drama about suburban infidelity? Or is it a New Millennium Harvey? I've seen it and I'm still not sure.

Rating:
Summary: The Trials of Marriage with a Twist.
Review: Dave (Campbell Scott) and Dana Hurst (Hope Davis) are married dentists who share a practice, two lovely homes, and three young daughters. Ten years of marriage has brought many successes but left them disinterested and unable to enjoy each other's company. When Dave sees Dana speaking to another man backstage at her amateur opera production, he interprets a simple gesture as an indication of infidelity. Exacerbated by Dana's unusually prolonged errands, Dave's frustration comes out in the form of daydreams in which he is goaded by an alter-ego (Denis Leary). Being cloistered together for 5 days while the flu makes its way through the family may or may not bring tensions out into the open.

"The Secret Lives of Dentists" has been adapted by Craig Lucas from Jane Smiley's novella "The Age of Grief", which borrows some of its ideas from James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". Like Walter Mitty, Dave Hurst is frustrated and bored and daydreams a lot as a result. He dreams of the relationship he used to have with his wife, and he imagines scenarios for his marriage's current condition. "The Secret Lives of Dentists" is essentially a "relationship movie", but one in which people deal with their discontent by avoiding one another. Dave and Dana don't communicate what they feel or think. Their interactions are brief and usually dishonest. We see what is going through Dave's mind, so we come to understand him. I don't think we ever fully understand Dana, but neither does her husband. Campbell Scott and Hope Davis are two of cinema's best character actors, and they do a convincing job of these two ordinary people who stopped working at their relationship at some point and woke up later to find that their marriage has turned into something neither of them expected or wanted. There are some darkly comic moments in the film, and I appreciate director Alan Rudolph's ability to see the humor in the Hursts' strife. Recommended as the trials of an affluent suburban marriage with an interesting twist and talented cast.

The DVD: Bonus features include an audio commentary by director Alan Rudolph and actor Campbell Scott, "Anatomy of a Scene" featurette, a blooper reel, and some deleted scenes. The audio commentary is decent. The "Anatomy of a Scene" featurette is one of those that was produced by and aired on the Sundance Channel. It's 25 minutes long. The scene -or scenes- that is discussed is the family's evening at Dana's opera performance, including the scene in which Dave begins to suspect her infidelity, which is the catalyst for the rest of the movie. The writer, producer, director, actors, and others involved with the production of the opera sequence are interviewed. This is a good featurette for aspiring filmmakers. I recommend the "Anatomy of a Scene" and then the audio commentary if your interest has not be quenched or you want to explore a different scene. Subtitles are available in English only.

Rating:
Summary: Best Child Actors Ever
Review: Dentists are a drilling joke, and a hated persona. With popcorn ready for a few laughs at the expense of the molar pullers, I was semi-disappointed that The Secret Lives of Dentists was actually an Ingmar Bergman pontification on marital angst.

I must mention that the youngsters in this film, especially the very young three year old, should get Academy Awards. I have never seen child actors do lines with such realism. Amazing.

Kudos also for a film about actual adults trying to raise children and juggle careers without Hollywood-Lib fry-it-up-in-the-pan bull. Yeah, child rearing is a sleep killer. Getting to work in the morning after diapers is mortifying. This is the first film I've seen where family life is fairly depicted without romanticism.

Is Hope Davis seeing another man? She sure loves opera. Her kids prefer Campbell Scott. What a nice father, so no wonder. Hope deserves a needle in the mouth.


Rating:
Summary: Like a shot of novocaine
Review: I don't mind if a film is slow-paced, so long as there is something of substance to grab me and hold my attention. The Secret Lives of Dentists is a forgettable trudge through middle-class family life and the mind of the dull and repressed dentist and dad, David Hurst, who is tormented by his unfaithful and distant wife and worn down by the demands his children make on him, even though he loves them all. Clumsy and awkward, the movie belabors the same points over and over again and slowly numbs your mind. Only one sequence of scenes stands out in memory - when the Hursts all come down with the flu and begin to vomit left and right. Great, I got the point that they were sick, but really, how much puke needs to fly in order to convey this fact?

If you want to see a great film that stars Hope Davis, watch About Schmidt. It's also a slow-paced film that deals with ordinary, everday subject matter; however, unlike The Secret Lives of Dentists, About Schmidt is moving and thoughtful and will linger in your mind for days after you watch it.

Rating:
Summary: Torture
Review: I found this film as torturous to watch as the protagonist felt his marriage was to endure. I had no sympathy for him, both for his behavior and lack of; and, other than Denis Leary, every moment was either boring or disgusting - mostly boring. For 1/4 to 1/2 the film, five characters are Vomiting - UGH. A film about a tortured marriage needn't be torturous to watch in order to get the point across.

The main character's inability to take action was not only frustrating, but made him so unlikable--he was wimpy to the point of, from a filmic perspective, inactive and lacking "character"--that there was no one to care for here. The wife was intentionally not a sympathetic character, so no love lost there - but again, she was just too unlikable and uninteresting. And there were three cloying children. A few funny moments strewn about. But not nearly enough. And Leary's charisma, not nearly enough. I fought my way through. I truly despised it. Please, take out the hour of vomit. It's a family drama, not a drug film.

As a reference point, I'd say I've enjoyed about as many Alan Rudolph films as I haven't.