Cylan Shaffer | Ljósið (The Light) / 2013

love flies off

by Douglas Messerli

 

Cylan Shaffer (screenwriter and director) Ljósið (The Light) / 2013 [10 minutes]

 

I have often argued for more gay dance films, and this film by Icelandic filmmaker Cylan Shaffer is a near perfect example of what I am seeking.

    Starring Brandon Coleman  and Barton Cowperthwaite, this dance drama involves a gay partner who, as in so many LGBTQ+ films is in half in flight from his own feelings and sexuality. Performed to the song “Varúð” by Sigur Rós, the two enter into a “loving and leaving” sense of reality, which as critic S. James Wegg describes it: “The notion of taking flight—as a super hero, abandoned purveyor of death or means to beginning life anew in a far-off place—gives this production enough wings to keep it high on viewers’ emotional planes far after these eagles land.”

      The film begins with an expression of pure sexual desire and search as Coleman amazingly lifts himself time and again from a groveling position in the sand to the arch of his body and a constant expression of sexual need. The first scene, as it might be described, ends with him putting his hands out from the underground cave or graffitied tunnel (Plato's cave) in which the work begins, calling out for a companion.

 

     But we quickly discover in this desert landscape that the lover, in fact, has literally flown off, take on in a plane which we now see as a destroyed old remnant of a plane. Whether this plane represents the dancer’s fears for his lovers exit or a memory of the facts we cannot determine. But just as suddenly, we observe a real plane in this desert landscape apparently ready for takeoff.

     Almost immediately the other dancer, clearly his lover of the past or present joins him as their lovingly intertwine in either memory of their love or attempt to maintain it, pushing together and pulling away from their own desires for one another.

 

    At moments, it appears as if the first lover is attempting not only to hold on to the man he loves, but assist him in his survival, as if the plane’s decay has been foretold. They almost fight to maintain their relationship, but despite their acrobatic attempts, the flight and separation seems inevitable. And if it does not actually end actually in death it closes clearly in a symbolic death of the “passenger,” moving away into new spaces. Even rushing back to the fallen lover cannot save their intense relationship.

 

     This film, somewhat oddly, reminds me of another film dance movie, although it seldom gets described as such: the Dutch film by Roeland Kerbosch, For a Lost Soldier (1992).

 

Los Angeles, July 6, 2024 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog.