The Death & Life of John F. Donovan (2019)
Directed by Xavier Dolan
Partly — The Death & Life of John F. Donovan is somewhat woke, scoring 40 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Xavier Dolan's English-language debut arrives with an impressive cast and a somber preoccupation with the machinery of fame.
Consciousness Markers
The central conflict revolves around the intense speculation and eventual revelation of John F. Donovan's sexuality and his relationship with the young actor.
The film provides a sharp, if melodramatic, critique of the tabloid media and the exploitative nature of the celebrity machine in Hollywood.
The film touches upon the emotional abuse experienced by the male protagonist at the hands of his mother, though the critique of patriarchal structures is subtle.
The film relies heavily on established, often white, Hollywood talent, offering little in the way of groundbreaking or diverse representation beyond the central figures.
The film is a character study and a melodrama, not a didactic piece designed to lecture the audience on social issues.
There is no discernible focus on racial dynamics, systemic racism, or the experiences of people of color within the narrative.
Environmental issues are entirely absent from the film's thematic concerns or plot points.
The film does not engage with themes of body image, self-acceptance, or physical representation.
There is no mention or depiction of neurodivergent characters or experiences within the story.
While it deals with a past scandal, the film is a fictionalized drama and does not attempt to rewrite a known historical event.
Why it received this score
Xavier Dolan's English-language debut arrives with an impressive cast and a somber preoccupation with the machinery of fame. Kit Harington plays the titular television star, a man whose closeted life becomes tabloid fodder, and the film traces his correspondence with a young actor, Rupert Turner, played as a child by Jacob Tremblay and as an adult by Ben Schnetzer. The emotional core is the secret itself: the speculation, the exposure, the ruin. This is a melodrama about a man destroyed by the public's appetite for his private life, and it handles that material with a sincerity that borders on the suffocating.
The film's most pointed instinct is its contempt for the celebrity apparatus. Tabloids, agents, and the insatiable audience are all implicated in Donovan's decline, and Dolan lingers on the cruelty of a culture that devours its idols and then mourns them. It is a critique delivered with a straight face and a heavy hand, but the target is legitimate. Elsewhere the social observation thins out considerably. A mother's emotional abuse of her son registers as a faint gesture toward domestic critique, and the casting leans on familiar Hollywood faces who do not expand the film's horizons in any meaningful way. The screenplay has other concerns on its mind.
What remains is a character study, and a soggy one according to most critics. The film does not lecture, does not organize itself around a thesis, and does not pretend to correct the historical record. It simply wallows. Dolan has made a film about the cost of hiding, and about the people who profit from the reveal. The result is technically assured and narratively adrift, a melodrama that mistakes volume for depth. We have seen this tragedy before, and we will see it again, likely with better reviews.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A decade after the death of an American TV star, a young actor reminisces about the written correspondence he once shared with the former, as well as the impact those letters had on both their lives.
Questions about The Death & Life of John F. Donovan
Is The Death & Life of John F. Donovan woke?
Partly — The Death & Life of John F. Donovan is somewhat woke, scoring 40 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Woke-Adjacent.
What makes The Death & Life of John F. Donovan woke?
3 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by LGBTQ+ Themes (75), Eat the Rich (60) and Feminist Agenda (30). On LGBTQ+ Themes: The central conflict revolves around the intense speculation and eventual revelation of John F.
How does The Death & Life of John F. Donovan compare to other 2019 movies?
It ranks #51 of the 284 films from 2019 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Black Christmas (79).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.