All Good Things ended up in my queue long before before I knew of All Good Things’ relationship to Robert Durst, whom I knew nothing about, or watched The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. I was probably attracted to All Good Things because of the cast, specifically Kirsten Dunst. When it ended up in my queue, it was long before I saw and became impressed with Ryan Gosling’s performances in Lars and the Real Girl, Blue Valentine, Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines. I had seen All Good Things’ director’s first film, Capturing the Friedmans, and while I enjoyed it, I did not recognize Andrew Jarecki’s name or connection to All Good Things until after I saw the HBO six-part documentary. I decided that the perfect time to watch All Good Things would be immediately after Stephen King’s A Good Marriage-contrast real life with fiction.
In a vacuum, All Good Things does not work as a story. Boy meets girl. Boy adores girl, and vice versa. Boy feels compelled to go back to his mean dad and work for him. Boy and girl grow distant because they want different things, but they are still pretty close in many other ways until he dramatically and openly becomes abusive. She disappears. Fast-forward twenty years later to find out what the boy is up to.
Everything is great until it dramatically isn’t and things become inexplicably awful very fast because of a childhood trauma. As a fictional story, there are few to zero hints that anything is wrong with Gosling’s character, David Marks, except when his friend hints that he is messed up, and David suddenly does his Stanley Kowalski impression. The pacing is completely off and the fast forward twenty years later feels random and contrived though it is interesting. Did Brian DePalma consult on All Good Things? Did Andrew Jarecki watch too much Dressed to Kill or Raising Cain? So the reason that Marks becomes a madman is because his mom committed suicide, and daddy was mean. Sorry, those two things happen to a lot of people, and they don’t feel compelled to become disgusted and eventually destroy what they claim to love.
All Good Things’ story only works if you know Robert Durst’s story and watch the drama for conclusions not provided or contradicted in the documentary. Marks is depicted as far less quirky, more withdrawn and more normal than his real life counterpart, who seems very aware and strong in old photographs from that period-not even a hint of happiness. All Good Things raised questions not answered by The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst: was the Durst family’s wealth rooted in shady, cash only deals as depicted in the movie? All Good Things does a great job of fleshing out characters that can only be recounted by others and cannot speak for themselves. Frank Langella excels at showing how the Marks’ patriarch’s initially distant and domineering is slowly crushed by his knowledge of events. Kirsten Dunst does a perfect job of showing character development as she is slowly suffocated, but by what? Kristen Wiig and Nick Offerman do a great job of contrasting the strange world of the Marks with how normal and light the real world is to explain why Dunst’s character was slowly being snuffed out. Gosling is clearly a great actor, but he wasn’t given much to do except be retiring and passive with brief moments of action. All Good Things needed someone remorseless and sly to fill in the blanks like Sebastian Stan. Only watch All Good Things after watching he Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.