I'm a gay man who was a teenager in the 1980s - a period of massive homophobia, because of HIV/AIDS and Reagan and Thatcher and ... all kinds of other reasons, I guess. I don't know.
It was hard. I think I - like many many other gay teens of the period - assumed if I came out I'd be ostracized by my family, end up homeless, uneducated, with no future. I think I thought if I told anyone I was gay, they'd beat the hell out of me. I thought if I came out as an adult, I'd be ostracized by everyone who knew me. And if I had sex with anyone I'd get AIDS and die.
I knew I was gay when I was thirteen. I didn't tell another soul until I was eighteen. I didn't tell my parents until I was 21.
I'm now fifty one, and I'll be honest, I don't think I've ever really got over it. I've had relationships, but there's still shame there. They're still fear here. I've had anxiety of various kinds all my life. I've never really felt supported by my parents. I've done fine in my career, but I'm not quick to trust. It's held me back. When I'm feeling strong, then I'm fine. When I'm not feeling strong, it feels like it's ruined my life or that I was supposed to find a way out of those experiences and I've somehow just never managed to do so.
At one level, this is what this film is about. And it is hard as hell to watch, and yet somehow still doesn't do the feeling justice. At another level it's about loss and bereavement and loneliness. And sometimes it feels like it didn't need to be about some of those things, that there was enough there. And sometimes it feels like it's over-egged, or cruel or just too sad, and yet it's affecting and ... honestly I'm having trouble articulating what I think about it.
Adam, our hero, is living alone, and then strikes up a relationship with a neighbor while he tries to write about his parents who died in an accident. He travels back to his childhood home and discovers without shock that his parents are living there exactly as they were before they died. They invite him in. They talk. And he starts to visit them regularly and talk to them about his experiences.
For much of the movie, it's unclear what's going on. Is it a dramatic conceit illustrating him thinking through his memories? Is it a psychotic break as he loses contact with reality? Or is it a supernatural film about ghosts? Which one of those you want it to be will probably affect how you feel about the ending, where one of those scenarios is very definitely chosen over the others.
Meanwhile there's his relationship with Harry, a younger man, clearly dealing with some of his own crap, who comes reaching out to Adam drunkenly one evening. He's damaged, attractive, drunk, kind, open and patient. He helps Adam work through his fears. He tries to understand what's going on with Adam and his parents.
Their relationship is lovely. Healing. Affirming. Important. Challenging. Flawed. And it seems like maybe Adam will be healed by the experience of meeting his parents and able to reengage with life and his relationship. For a while it seems like there's something positive about the whole experience and it will move them all forward. It feels like it has hope. Hope, I guess I needed. Hope that you can move past pain and find love and that all of this horror would actually mean something or be worth something.
But then there's the ending.
You'll want to stop now if you haven't seen it. Last chance.
Just as our hero finds peace with his parents, he goes to see Harry, only to discover - sixth sense style - that Harry probably killed himself, but certainly died - immediately after their first meeting. Since then Adam has been having a relationship with his ghost. He helps Harry feel loved in this moment and the two of them disappear into the distance consoling each other, and it's so desperately sad, and it's sort of beautiful, it was weirdly truthful (a happy ending could seem too trite), but also too hard and harsh and cruel - he didn't get past his pain, he just had more pain to follow. He didn't get to move on. He was stuck still at the end.
I struggle with this so much. It's so, so very painful to watch. It hasn't given me hope. It's given me pain. And sadness. And I don't know how to deal with it. It's made the world feel more cruel, more awful, more distressing. And ... it may be true, but it hasn't ... helped.
This is the struggle I have with it. Much of it felt right. Much of it felt true. Much of it felt hard. But is that enough? What if I watch it and come away feeling more lacking in hope or faith or a sense of the future? Is its truth enough? Is seeing the truth of gay pain enough? I don't know if it is. I think I need gay hope. I think I need gay acceptance. I need to feel like the future is better.
And the death of the parents gave this opportunity to have Adam talk to his parents about his pain and get acceptance. And that was amazing. But bizarrely, telling that story of loss got in the way of telling the story of gay loneliness. And minimized it. And I struggled with that.
I have issues with it. But I think to some extent it's because I identified with it too strongly. It meant too much. And I feel like maybe that level of identification might not be possible for a straight person who didn't experience this period and time. I sometimes wonder if straight people are able to find a story of gay people experiencing awful pain somehow beautiful (like Brokeback Mountain) when all I see is the pain. When all I feel is the rawness. This felt like it was all about the rawness.
But the rawness and the pain is real too, I guess. Much as I wish it wasn't. And I've never seen a film that connected with me quite as directly as this one, or made me feel the pain quite as much. And here I am hours later obsessively writing about it.
And that's why it's getting such a high rating. How could I not? It spoke to me like no film ever has. But I can't give it a ten out of ten, because there's a shard of ice buried in my chest and a rawness to my eyes and a darkness to my future and this movie made me aware of them, but didn't take the pain away.
It was hard. I think I - like many many other gay teens of the period - assumed if I came out I'd be ostracized by my family, end up homeless, uneducated, with no future. I think I thought if I told anyone I was gay, they'd beat the hell out of me. I thought if I came out as an adult, I'd be ostracized by everyone who knew me. And if I had sex with anyone I'd get AIDS and die.
I knew I was gay when I was thirteen. I didn't tell another soul until I was eighteen. I didn't tell my parents until I was 21.
I'm now fifty one, and I'll be honest, I don't think I've ever really got over it. I've had relationships, but there's still shame there. They're still fear here. I've had anxiety of various kinds all my life. I've never really felt supported by my parents. I've done fine in my career, but I'm not quick to trust. It's held me back. When I'm feeling strong, then I'm fine. When I'm not feeling strong, it feels like it's ruined my life or that I was supposed to find a way out of those experiences and I've somehow just never managed to do so.
At one level, this is what this film is about. And it is hard as hell to watch, and yet somehow still doesn't do the feeling justice. At another level it's about loss and bereavement and loneliness. And sometimes it feels like it didn't need to be about some of those things, that there was enough there. And sometimes it feels like it's over-egged, or cruel or just too sad, and yet it's affecting and ... honestly I'm having trouble articulating what I think about it.
Adam, our hero, is living alone, and then strikes up a relationship with a neighbor while he tries to write about his parents who died in an accident. He travels back to his childhood home and discovers without shock that his parents are living there exactly as they were before they died. They invite him in. They talk. And he starts to visit them regularly and talk to them about his experiences.
For much of the movie, it's unclear what's going on. Is it a dramatic conceit illustrating him thinking through his memories? Is it a psychotic break as he loses contact with reality? Or is it a supernatural film about ghosts? Which one of those you want it to be will probably affect how you feel about the ending, where one of those scenarios is very definitely chosen over the others.
Meanwhile there's his relationship with Harry, a younger man, clearly dealing with some of his own crap, who comes reaching out to Adam drunkenly one evening. He's damaged, attractive, drunk, kind, open and patient. He helps Adam work through his fears. He tries to understand what's going on with Adam and his parents.
Their relationship is lovely. Healing. Affirming. Important. Challenging. Flawed. And it seems like maybe Adam will be healed by the experience of meeting his parents and able to reengage with life and his relationship. For a while it seems like there's something positive about the whole experience and it will move them all forward. It feels like it has hope. Hope, I guess I needed. Hope that you can move past pain and find love and that all of this horror would actually mean something or be worth something.
But then there's the ending.
You'll want to stop now if you haven't seen it. Last chance.
Just as our hero finds peace with his parents, he goes to see Harry, only to discover - sixth sense style - that Harry probably killed himself, but certainly died - immediately after their first meeting. Since then Adam has been having a relationship with his ghost. He helps Harry feel loved in this moment and the two of them disappear into the distance consoling each other, and it's so desperately sad, and it's sort of beautiful, it was weirdly truthful (a happy ending could seem too trite), but also too hard and harsh and cruel - he didn't get past his pain, he just had more pain to follow. He didn't get to move on. He was stuck still at the end.
I struggle with this so much. It's so, so very painful to watch. It hasn't given me hope. It's given me pain. And sadness. And I don't know how to deal with it. It's made the world feel more cruel, more awful, more distressing. And ... it may be true, but it hasn't ... helped.
This is the struggle I have with it. Much of it felt right. Much of it felt true. Much of it felt hard. But is that enough? What if I watch it and come away feeling more lacking in hope or faith or a sense of the future? Is its truth enough? Is seeing the truth of gay pain enough? I don't know if it is. I think I need gay hope. I think I need gay acceptance. I need to feel like the future is better.
And the death of the parents gave this opportunity to have Adam talk to his parents about his pain and get acceptance. And that was amazing. But bizarrely, telling that story of loss got in the way of telling the story of gay loneliness. And minimized it. And I struggled with that.
I have issues with it. But I think to some extent it's because I identified with it too strongly. It meant too much. And I feel like maybe that level of identification might not be possible for a straight person who didn't experience this period and time. I sometimes wonder if straight people are able to find a story of gay people experiencing awful pain somehow beautiful (like Brokeback Mountain) when all I see is the pain. When all I feel is the rawness. This felt like it was all about the rawness.
But the rawness and the pain is real too, I guess. Much as I wish it wasn't. And I've never seen a film that connected with me quite as directly as this one, or made me feel the pain quite as much. And here I am hours later obsessively writing about it.
And that's why it's getting such a high rating. How could I not? It spoke to me like no film ever has. But I can't give it a ten out of ten, because there's a shard of ice buried in my chest and a rawness to my eyes and a darkness to my future and this movie made me aware of them, but didn't take the pain away.