‘Gloaming’ Blends Star Power, Sentiment

The television movie “In the Gloaming” arrives on HBO Sunday front-loaded with a double dose of sentiment.

It was directed, first of all, by Christopher Reeve in his debut behind the camera, his first major creative effort since the spinal cord injury that placed him in a wheelchair. Second, there is a potentially compelling story, the moving chronicle of Danny, a young man with AIDS, who returns home to die.

This is a powerful combination, powerful enough to have attracted a lineup of actors that includes Glenn Close in the role of Janet, Danny’s mother; Bridget Fonda as his sister Anne; and Whoopi Goldberg as his nurse, Myrna.

But the real question is whether this blend of sentiment and star power can have an impact that is translucent enough to allow the story to stand on its own dramatic merit.

The short answer is that the production is remarkably successful in doing just that.

Reeve’s direction, perhaps predictably, is actor-oriented. And with the talented cast at his disposal, he was wise to establish a pacing that affords his players the leisure to employ dramatic techniques not always common in small-screen productions.

In the many scenes between Danny (played in poignantly low-keyed fashion by Robert Sean Leonard) and his mother, for example, as well as in the almost mute emotional repression of the father (superbly rendered by David Strathairn), the most powerful feelings are conveyed not by the dialogue but by such unspoken but powerful elements as body language and eye movement.

In that sense alone, in his ability to inspire and to create the opportunity for outstanding performances from the actors, Reeve’s directorial debut has to be considered a significant achievement.

Whether the story could stand as well as it does without the pivotal contributions made by Reeve and this particular group of actors is another issue.

The core of the plot is one of the essential themes of contemporary drama: What happens when an AIDS-afflicted young man, facing his final days, elects to spend them with a family that is seemingly incapable of dealing directly with him as a unique individual or with his illness?

It is a powerful theme, and one that hits home brilliantly in individual scenes. But Reeve makes his only directorial misstep by positioning the broader story in a kind of sanitized Golden Pond setting, filled with moody shots of darkening skies, falling leaves and changing seasons.

Will Scheffer’s script (adapted from Alice Elliott Dark’s New Yorker short story) clearly intended to pose the family’s ingrown upper-class lifestyle as a metaphor for the general public’s desire to avoid confronting the AIDS issue.

The result of the lovely settings and the almost complete glossing over of the physical realities of death from AIDS, however, is a tale that ultimately has more to do with the recovery of the family than with the death of the son. And there is something inherently disturbing about a drama that demands the noble passing of a gay young man to provide an epiphany for his repressed parents.

* “In the Gloaming” airs 9 to 10 p.m. Sunday on HBO. The network has rated the film TV-PG (may not be suitable for young children).