Tag Archives: queer classics

Queer Classics: “Rocketman” (2019)

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After watching Bohemian Rhapsody, I had reservations about going to see Rocketman. While I like Queen’s music, I don’t have the same investment in either them or Freddie Mercury as I do Elton John. I’ve been a diehard Elton fan for decades, and he’s one of the few artists that I have made an effort to see in concert as many times as I can. So, given how thoroughly meh Bohemian turned out to be (how a film about Queen can be so lacking in energy is truly strange), I went in to Rocketman with somewhat low expectations.

Fortunately, I needn’t have worried. Rocketman was everything I wanted and more.

The film begins with Elton John entering a rehabilitation facility. He then narrates his childhood and adolescence, his union with his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell), his tumultuous affair with his manager John Reid (Richard Madden), his heights of glory and the pits of despair.

As with any successful film, casting is everything, and Taren Egerton is an absolute gem in this film. Somehow, through the magic of makeup and his own style, he comes to embody Elton in a way that is, sometimes, truly startling. And, unlike in Bohemian Rhapsody, where Rami Malek was not doing much of the actual singing, here Egerton actually shows off his singing chops. Though he doesn’t have quite the high tenor (nor the falsetto) that was such a hallmark of Elton’s earlier career, he is a very fine singer in his own right, and he does manage to capture some of Elton’s stranger enunciations. There were times that I had begun to think that I was actually watching Elton himself, and if Egerton isn’t at least nominated for an Academy Award for this there is no justice in the world.

It is, in other words, Egerton’s film, though Jamie Bell also deserves honorable mention for his fine turn as Elton’s lyricist Bernie Taupin, and Richard Madden has a fine villainous (and sexy) turn as Elton’s manager/lover John Reid. Everyone else in the film is quite serviceable, though there’s not a great deal of subtlety in Bryce Dallas Howard’s characterization as Elton’s mother, even if she does the best with what the story gives her. Gemma Jones, however, is warm and lovely as Elton’s grandmother, and while she’s not onscreen very long, she makes it clear that she is one of the few sources of genuine stability and love in his life.

Rocketman doesn’t shy away from painting its subject in a very unflattering light. Indeed, as my friend remarked, it’s a little surprising how scathing it is in its depiction of Elton’s lower points, particularly his cruelty toward those in his life who really do seem to care for him. What’s more, it shows us just how far Elton had sunk into a pit of self-loathing by the time that he finally sought our rehabilitation, and how much the heights of success was matched by a depth of despair. This despair, of course, is made all the more wrenching because of Elton’s being forced to live so much of his life in the closet (at least, unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman emphasizes the importance of this fact, including showing a very steamy sex scene between Elton and John Reid).

For all of its darkness, however, Rocketman has many moments of the utopian joy that one frequently associates with the musical genre. I was particularly struck by the choreography and cinematography of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” which catches up you in Egerton’s enthusiastic performance and the myriad bodies moving with joy through his vocals. Indeed, the film makes it clear that Elton is truly one of those people for whom musical ability is truly a gift, and the many musical numbers, even the ones that occur at his darker moments, are exquisite listening.

Just as importantly, Rocketman highlights how important Elton’s relationship with Bernie Taupin was and remains, even after all of these years. There’s a certain irony about Elton’s oft-repeated claim that the two of them have never had an argument, as it seems that the only reason this is true is because Taupin refuses to engage with Elton’s vicious diatribes. I truly enjoyed seeing Jamie Bell in the role, as I often feel that he doesn’t get enough appreciation as an actor. There is an undeniable chemistry between Egerton and Bell that emerges at numerous points in the film, and it is clear that, for Elton at least, the affection was at first more than brotherly. As the years progress, their relationship deepens and matures, until they are at last brothers in all but blood, and their last scene together is immensely touching.

It’s a little bit funny, but it’s quite astonishing how easily many of Elton’s numbers fit so seamlessly into the narrative that the film constructs (even if their date of composition doesn’t necessarily line up with the film’s chronology). There’s a certain irony about this, however, for the film doesn’t actually use any of the songs from John’s and Taupin’s autobiographical album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. I suspect this is because so many of them are explicitly about his life with Bernie, and it might have felt a bit trite to have song and narrative line up so neatly. However, I was a little sad not to hear Egerton perform “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” (though I was pleased to see the film make use of some of Elton’s deeper cuts).

All in all, I really enjoyed Rocketman. I consider myself an Elton John fan, and to see his early life brought to such astounding life on screen is uniquely pleasurable. One gets the impression that, for Elton at least, this was a deeply personal film, and while I don’t know just how much input he had in its creation, it feels as if Rocketman comes from the heart. Full of emotion, good storytelling, and infectious music, Rocketman is a moving testament to the extraordinary life of one of the greatest musicians of all time.

Queer Classics: The Agony and the Ecstasy of “Call Me By Your Name” (2017)

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Warning. Spoilers for the film follow.

Call Me By Your Name opens with a series of snapshots of statues from antiquity, emblems of beauty, desire, and a world lost to the vicissitudes of time. About midway through the film, the main character Elio’s father refers to these statues, arguing that they dare us to desire, their faintly contorted forms contending with the perils of physicality.

In a similar way, Call Me By Your Name dares us to desire, to give ourselves up to the complicated, messy, infuriating yet delicious confusion of lust, love, and longing.

Set in the early 1980s in the north of Italy, the film follows young 17-year-old (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer), a graduate student, as they contend with their burgeoning feelings for one another. Their friendship blossoms into an intense physical and emotional connection, before Oliver must return to the United States, leaving a heartbroken Elio behind.

In some ways, the film’s narrative reminds me more than a little of the tragic romance between the Roman Emperor Hadrian and the youth Antinoös. It’s more than just the age difference–though that’s part of it. It’s about the aching beauty of youth, about the awareness that the passion that begins any relationship is doomed to cool in the fires of time. If you’ve ever read the heart-wrenching Memoirs of Hadrian, you’ll know what I mean.

The performances are…exquisite. There’s really no other word for it. Hammer has that sort of effortless male handsomeness that one associates with classic Hollywood, but it is his effortlessly masculine voice that truly stirs the loins. There’s just something deeply erotic about the richness of it, a deep purr that also reminds me of the best voices of classic Hollywood actors (I’m thinking in particular of Gregory Peck). I will say, though, that his character Oliver remains something of an enigma. We don’t really get to know him in the same way Elio,

For his part, Timothée Chalamet shines as Elio. He possesses the same sort of elusive beauty as the statues that his father so lovingly excavates. Several times, the camera catches him in profile, and I couldn’t help but notice that he bore a striking resemblance to those same ancient statues. Maybe it’s the turn of the nose, or perhaps it’s just the slightly elfin cast to his features. I’m not quite sure.

And, also like those statues, Chalamet manages to convey the gangly, tormented physicality of a teenage boy in hopeless love. There’s a certain anguish that Chalamet captures, both in his simultaneously graceful and awkward physical comportment as well as his ability to convey Elio’s uncertainty about his feelings for the golden-haired Oliver. The first half of the film sees the two of them existing in an uneasy tension, neither quite able to express openly the way they clearly feel about one another.

When they finally do consummate their affection, the camera is rather shy, not showing the details but leaving us in no doubt as to what is happening. In keeping the lovemaking away from the gaze, the film dares us to experience the erotic without the messy trappings of the prurient. The physically intimate relationship the two clearly share is conveyed in other, arguably more meaningful ways: through a gentle touch of a leg, the touching of one foot upon the other, a tender yet passionate kiss.

But, just as the statues of antiquity, for all their beauty, remain fragmented, beaten down and broken apart by the vicissitudes of time, so the romance between Elio and Oliver must contend with the fact that it will always be limited by their time together. Theirs is a connection doomed to flower and then instantly begin to fade, mirroring the exquisite fruits that so often appear on the table.

And that, to me, seems to be the film’s central interest. For as much as Elio is in the midst of his beautiful youth and as profound as this relationship with Oliver has been, time will inevitably wear away the hard edges of it. That romance, like all things, will fall victim to the vicissitudes of memory. And, for the film, it also falls victim to Oliver, who eventually departs, leaving a heartbroken Elio behind in Italy. When he calls his mother and asks her to come and get him, the heartbreak feels real and even now, a few days after I’ve seen the film, I still feel that gut-punch of the end of a romance.

Fortunately for Elio, his father (played by a scene-stealing Michael Stuhlbarg) is a man of infinite wit and wisdom. In a heart-warming (and wrenching) talk with his son, he reminds him that he shouldn’t crush the part of him that was hurt, in the hope that it will keep the pain away. Instead, he should remember the beautiful bond that he had with Oliver, recognizing that feeling is an essential part of what makes us human and what gives life its peculiar savor.

The film, like the ancient statuary with which it begins, attempts to capture an elusive, transient moment of summer. But of course, cinematic time waits for no one, and for all of the camera’s loving, lingering attention to the pleasures of the fleshly instant, it inevitably moves us forward. The summers of our life cannot be held, much as we might wish it were otherwise, and it is precisely because they are so transient that they pierce us with their intensity. We mourn the passing, even as we are in the midst of it. Call Me, more than perhaps any other film that I’ve recently seen, captures the fleeting nature of desire.

Call Me By Your Name is one of those extraordinary stories of queer love that stays with you. It’s not tragic, but it is bittersweet, and in that sense it ably captures the contradictions at the heart of so much queer love. While we have come a long way in terms of the societal acceptance of same-sex love, there are still many more mysteries to the queer heart, many of which don’t even have a name.

And yet still they call to our hearts.

Queer Classics: “The Boys in the Band”

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Today in “Queer Classics,” we’re reaching back in time a bit, to what is considered to be one of the key films in the history of queer cinema, William Friedkin’s The Boys in the Band. Based on the play of the same name, the film depicts a birthday party thrown by Michael (Kenneth Nelson) for his frienemy Harold (Leonard Fray). The invitees include:  the flamboyant and campy Emory (Cliff Gorman); Michael’s one-time lover Donald (Frederick Combs); tortured Bernard (Reuben Greene); vexed couple Hank and Larry (Laurence Luckinbill and Keith Prentice); toyboy Cowboy Tex (Robert La Tourneaux); and, rather inadvertently, allegedly straight Alan (Peter White). When Michael initiates a phone game in which each player must earn points by calling and confessing feelings of love to someone whom they truly loved, the result is a bubbling up of long-repressed tensions and hatreds.

One can see in this film a glimpse of a gay identity in flux. Released the year after Stonewall, one can see in these young gay men a great deal of the self-hatred that was part and parcel of that identity (and, unfortunately, still is in many places). References to psychologists and therapists abound, and the rampant consumption of drugs (both recreational and prescription), suggests the bleakness with which these characters view their lives. Furthermore, the frictions between Hank and Larry–the former of whom wants monogamy and commitment, the latter of whom wants commitment without the monogamy–highlights the deeply troubled history of same-sex coupledom. While monogamy is taken as the standard by which all queer relationships are evaluated today, this film shows that it is possible, and even desirable, to look outside that model and that it is possible, just possible, that two people can find fulfillment with one another without its strict binds.

The biting humour is as stinging now as it was way back in those bad ole days, precisely because so many of us queer men still feel a bit distant from the mainstream culture of which we are a part. Those of us who still relish the revolutionary potential of an explicitly queer politics still take a bit of an ironic look at the homonormative world around us. While those in this film do the same, their caustic venom is turned inward as much as it is outward.

The most difficult question to ask, and to answer, is whether any of the characters are truly likable. There is something tragically comic about Michael, who has clearly internalized the homophobia of the surrounding culture to such an extent that he begins to lash out at the people that he no doubt loves the most (but isn’t that what we all do, after all?) For his part, Harold is Michael’s double, and he may be even better at the bitterness game than his friend, a fact of which he is well aware. Neither of them may be likable in the traditional sense, but the film does seem to want us to understand them in the context of the culture that produced them.

There is something both profoundly moving and bleakly nihilistic about Michael’s final statement. When he says that, like his father who died in his arms, “I don’t understand any of it. I never did,” one gets the distinct sense that he is speaking not just of the mystery over what Allan was crying about, but also about the entire nature of their queer existence. How do you cope with a world that either denies your existence or ruthlessly pathologizes you? How do you live with yourself or with others? It’s a bleak and terrifying question, and the films ending ultimately fails to answer it with anything other than a certain nihilistic despair.

Beyond the acidic, biting dialogue there are so many other wonderful flourishes that truly call to a gay audience. There is, for example, the book on the films of Joan Crawford that Harold reads while the telephone game proceeds. If ever there were a sign of abjection, it would be Crawford, and her inclusion, however oblique, is one of the film’s defter touches.

Does the film, as so many have stated, trade in stereotypes about gay men? Certainly, but that doesn’t mean that such stereotypes don’t often have at least a slight ring of truth. For that reason, I found the film echoed many of the experiences I still have today, calling to that part of myself that still, strangely, yearns for those things that make gay culture, well, gay (or queer). I’ve often felt that I was born a generation or two too late, and that the things that I take pleasure in are the things treasured by the generations that preceded me. For that reason, I loved this film, and would definitely recommend it to all those seeking to gain an understanding of queer history.

Queer Classics: “Gods and Monsters”

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Warning:  Spoilers follow.

I’d been wanting to watch this film from beginning to end–I’d seen a few bits and pieces now and then throughout the years–for a long time.  Fortunately, it became available On Demand the other day, and so I decided to a look.

And I’m really glad I did.

I’ve always had a bit of a crush on both Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser, and watching this film reminds me of why.  McKellen plays famed horror director James Whale, slowly fading into obscurity decades after his famous successes in the 1930s, while Fraser plays a gardener who gradually finds himself drawn into Whale’s world of old Hollywood memories and tortured reminiscences of World War I.  At first, the rather dim gardener (whose name is Clayton Boone), seems unsure how to respond, but gradually the two develop a strong bond that is increasingly tested by Whale’s failing mental and physical health and his eventual, final descent into madness and despair.

In many ways, this film feels like a romance that isn’t really a romance.  We’re never allowed to forget that Clayton is rigorously straight, but one can still detect a fair bit of on-screen chemistry between the two men, not least because it’s obvious that there is a great deal of chemistry between the two actors.  And of course there’s no denying that Whale obviously experiences some measure of attraction for his handsome gardener, though I would hesitate to say that it is erotic in the sense that we normally expect.  While that may be an element, he also seems to see in Boone a measure of the youth and vitality that he saw during his time in World War I, a reminder of the exquisite yet frail nature of young beauty.

Whale is also a man tormented by his past, both that in the trenches and his time as one of Hollywood’s most famous directors.  This past continues to intrude on the present.  Whale has begun to suffer from a series of strokes that keep his mind from being able to stay firmly in the present.  Visually, of course, the film allows us to see this through editing, and there are several moments where we are violently jarred into the past.  Through such editing, we come to understand the mental (and, increasingly, physical) agony that Whale feels as his body fails him and he yearns to recapture some measure of the success that and energy that he possessed in his youth.

This toggling between various times also explains one of the film’s most appealing aspects, i.e. the rumination on the nature of Hollywood.  As with the finest of films about the industry of the industry (I’m thinking here of ones like Sunset Boulevard), Gods and Monsters shows us that Hollywood is a fickle mistress, willing to abandon those who are no longer seen as lucrative investments.  As the film points out, at least two of Whale’s films, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein have rightly become two of the most canonical films in the horror canon.  Fortunately, it also reminds us that Whale produced what is largely considered the best adaptation of the famous musical Showboat, before gradually fading into the obscurity from which he has yet to emerge.

Like the best films, Gods and Monsters leaves you with a faint feeling of sadness and melancholy, of the a world that has vanished and that will never reappear.  One cannot help but feel at least a measure of nostalgia for the world of old Hollywood that the film presents to us, a world of larger-than-life figures that hold on to the last fading vestiges of their former glories.

At the dramatic level, the film features excellent performances, not just from McKellen and Fraser, but also from the late Lynn Redgrave as Whale’s caretaker Hanna.  Judgmental and harsh at times (she refers to Whale as a “bugger,”) she is equally devoted to him and is absolutely devastated by his suicide.  There is clearly a strong relationship between the two of them, one born of mutual affection and love.  But the dramatic heart of the film is the relationship between Whale and Boone, a touching if somewhat tragic bonding between the old world and the new.

Score:  10/10