different ways of loving and believing
by Douglas
Messerli
Stephen
Cone (screenwriter and director) The
Wise Kids / 2011
The other day I watched one of his early films, The Wise Kids, in two entire viewings over two days, and I realized just how subtly his “ideas” were presented. In this film three students, one a church organist and drama leader, and the other, a slightly older, perhaps lesbian girl, ostracized from her grandmother’s love while still living in her house, stand in for a wide range of viewpoints, while still all deeply embraced by the religious community in which they were raised.
Although Tim is less disenchanted with his
beliefs than Brea, arguing that he pretty much came to his beliefs by himself,
he is having his own difficulties with his religious convictions because he has
discovered that he is gay.
It’s clear that all the girls in his
school, represented here only by Brea and Laura, find him cute. But a casual
question from a visitor to the community, “Is he gay?” signals these young
people that Tim is, indeed, homosexual, bringing Laura to the ask the question
directly and to promise to email him a list of Bible passages that prove it is
a grave sin. Tim blandly suggests she do that, making it clear, despite his own
insistence that it is simply something he is trying to work it out with prayer
and thought, that he is comfortable within his own skin. And it is that
self-assuredness that makes this character so truly likeable. Soon after, he
tells his working-class father that he is gay, a widower who accepts the fact
quite affably. But when Tim’s younger brother hears of it, he is anything but
accepting, and Tim, who has begun to bond with Brea, calls her, suggesting he
needs to get away.
Meanwhile, Brea, much loved by the
elderly busy-body in the church, Ms. Powell, has become friendly with her
granddaughter, Cheryl (Sadie Rogers)—a self-admitted non-believer, and the two
take her along to a clearly mixed gay, lesbian, and freewheeling local bar in
their small community. There, Brea lets her hair down by wildly dancing, Tim
finds a handsome young man with whom he passionately dances, and Cheryl is
approached by another woman. The trio has found their true spiritual home.
But the other major figure in this tender
film, the drama coach Austin (played by the director himself) is double-locked
into that closed society by his marriage and his sincere love of his wife Elizabeth,
and the growing recognition that he, too, is gay. We recognize his emotional
state by a hand left perhaps just a second too long on a student’s shoulder, a
clumsily attempted kiss of Tim at a party, and his inability to have sex with
the wife whom he, nonetheless, loves.
Brea, who was preparing, like Laura, to
attend a local religious college, has quietly applied to NYU and suddenly is
accepted, while Tim had planned all along to attend the New School.
Understandably, Laura feels rejected, but we also know she will find a local
boy to settle down with who shares her religious fervor. Tim and Laura will
surely face rockier but far more varied futures.
A return home after their first
semesters, brings together the young trio, who perform again in Austin’s
dramatization of the Christ’s birth. And during that visit, as Austin meets
with Tim, the older man admits that he is gay. In a reversal of the usual
roles, the younger consoles the elder with a deep hug, knowing surely that the
elder is doomed to either remain in the closet or to destroy the entire life he
has made for himself. It’s clear that he will chose the former, mouthing during
the performance, “I love you,” to his wife, she responding “I love you too.”
Los Angeles, February 16, 2018
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (February
2018).
No comments:
Post a Comment