Reflection Paper on a Movie

The Life of David Gale

Notes on the film

The film involves the components of drama, crime and thrill. The bulk of the movie is played through the series of flashback scenes. The central character of this thriller drama is David Gale. David Gale acted as the head of the philosophy department at Austin University. He was also the famous author and had written many well regarded books. In addition, he was also a member of Deathwatch, which was an anti-capital punishment activist group. He was quite active and visible in the group.

Constance Harraway was one of the best friends of Gale. She was a fellow activist at Deathwatch. Gale was much closed to her, as most of the times his wife remained absent due to having a love affair with another guy.

One night, Gale was sexually attracted by an attractive student from his class, Berlin. Later, the girl accused Gale of rape, because he failed her. Although Gale was almost cleared of the charges, Due to the negative publicity, his career as an educator was ended, Gale started to drink under the depression of having no job and wife.

Few years later, Harraway was found raped and murdered. Gale was charged with the crime due to his bad reputation. All the efforts of his lawyer failed, and he was convicted. Just 3 days before the execution of the death sentence, Gale agrees to tell his story to a journalist from a major news magazine. As Bloom, the journalist discusses the facts of the murder with Gale, she realized that Gale may be innocent. While investigating, Bloom faced a cow boy who tried to make her stop the investigation. She was also curious that, why the famous lawyer couldn't help Gale. She was able to find the truth, but it was too late. It turned out that David had been framed himself for murder, so that his anti death penalty group would be able to force the state for executing an innocent man. Harraway, had in fact, committed suicide, as she was already a patient of Leukemia, she preferred to die for a noble cause. The group had the video proof and, they released that video after the execution, in order to prove that many innocents are executed without proper investigation.

Analysis and Interpretation

This movie represents a group which was against the death penalty. The ...