Judhajit Bagchi and Ranadeep Bhattacharyya | Amen / 2010

it’s just a phase

by Douglas Messerli

 

Judhajit Bagchi and Ranadeep Bhattacharyya (screenwriters and directors) Amen / 2010 [24 minutes]

 

The beautiful Andy (Jitin Gulati) shows up at Harry’s (Karanveer Mehra) door, the two evidently having made a cellphone connection for gay sex. But even as he enters Harry’s charming bungalow surrounded by plants, Andy is on the phone with his fiancée Tina, creating a kind of strange antiphon as he attempts to answer questions simultaneously from both Tina and Harry. Andy claims to be in the office, while having to introduce himself to Harry and engage in the polite preliminaries of pre-sex while attentively listening to her prattle about her purchases of the day, including having bought a pink shirt for him, which he declares is a feminine color. He asks Harry where the bed is while telling Tina, apparently for the first time, that he loves her. When Tina declares he’s bought something for herself as well, at the same instant Harry hands him some water, so that it appears Andy’s query about Tina’s purchase is “water?

     It’s clear, accordingly, from the first moment of this film that something is terribly amiss. And when Harry finally hangs up from Tina, he immediately strips and almost attacks Harry as they passionately kiss, Harry quickly pulling out a condom, while Harry reminds him that the one thing he doesn’t do is get fucked.

      Andy seems to determined to ignore his protests and, in effect, to rape him, until finally Harry pushes him off, Andy becoming furious for the fact, insisting that he has wasted the entire time with him. “Fucking useless,” he screams as he stands and begins to dress. Again Andy reminds him that he was clear on his profile that he doesn’t participate in anal sex. When he was a child his grandfather abused him, and he still recalls the endless bleeding.

      But Andy has utterly no empathy for him, and when Harry asks, somewhat naively, if they might meet again, Harry almost violently turns on him declaring that there is no more time for men. And in any event he will never meet up again with him, he scoffs.

      “Tomorrow is my engagement,” he angrily declares. “And this was my last chance. You fucking wasted my time.”

      Harry responds in the most honest way possible: “And what about wasting a girl’s life? I hate pretentious guys like you…”gays” like you.”

      Calling Andy gay results in a violent outburst as Andy begins to throw Harry’s possessions to the floor, cutting himself in the process, as he moves forward to pummel Harry as well. The fury is intense, while he shouts, “Who told you I was gay. I’m not like you…faggot! You bloody

cocksucker. How dare you!”

      So begins the most intense portrayal of the “I’m not gay syndrome” perhaps ever filmed, when, after partially beating Harry, Andy falls to the floor in a fit of overacting so extreme that you might imagine that the actor had studied “method” acting under the tutelage of a Bollywood queen.

      One nonetheless sympathizes for his frenzied breakdown. After all, anyone who can even half-credibly howl out “My urge to sleep with men does not make me gay” ought to receive some sort of consolation.

      Nonetheless, Andy seems to have had a great many male sex partners over the years—although in another zinger, after Harry asks if he enjoys sex with girls equally, Andy nonchalantly replies that he does not believe in premarital sex. “You mean with ‘girls,’” Harry jabs back.

     Slowly Harry talks his aggressor down from his heighted emotional hysteria based on his beliefs that gays are different, proving through his own tender ministrations of Andy’s bloody hand and intelligent his questions and probing comments that in fact, there is not so much difference between the two of them after all.

      The heart of this film is the short course that Harry provides on “the gay experience 101,” asking the basic questions such as “When did you know you were first attracted to men?” and “What does if feel like when you see an attractive man?” Similarly, he explains that gay men also desire relationships, that most gay men have little in common with the stereotypes shown on TV and in the movies. And finally, Harry explains the obvious, that “life does not let you choose your parents or your sexuality.” Most important, he argues that in going ahead with his marriage, as a gay man—whether or not he denies it or pretends that it is “just a phase”—Andy is not only “wasting someone’s life and, in the bargain, spoiling his own life as well.”

      Would every man on the eve of his wedding have someone like Harry around to let him know, if nothing else, just how destructive is his inability to describe himself a gay—or queer or being homosexual, or even full admitting to others that he enjoys sex with his own gender.

      Andy also challenges Harry to stop carrying around his childhood terror of his grandfather’s abuse and his fears of anal bleeding, and to embrace his sexual pleasures fully.

      Yet Harry leaves, hurrying off to his Tina, seemingly as if his intense conversation with Harry has meant nothing.

      This is, one must remember a movie embracing gay life in an India where being gay was still illegal. In 2009, the Delhi High Court found (in the case of the Naz Foundation vs. the government of NCT of Delhi) that section 377 (which declared carnal intercourse with any man, woman or animal, against the order of nature, and punishable with life imprisonment) to be a direct violation of the fundament rights provided by the Indian Constitution. But in 2012 the Ministry of Home Affairs declared an open opposition to the decimalization of homosexual activity, only to have that view gain reversed by the Central Indian Government.

     In fact, July 2, the date of the 2009 decision, is generally celebrated throughout India as “Indian Coming Out Day.” Yet as late as 2013, the Supreme Court set aside the 2009 decision. And Section 377 was not repealed until 2015.

     In 2010, accordingly, when this brave movie was released it was meg with a great deal of controversy and was almost denied a certificate by the Film Review Committee permitting its release.

      Is it any wonder, accordingly, that directors Judhajit Bagchi and Ranadeep Bhattacharyya chose a happy ending for over what would have been a far more realistic one. In the film, after a short period, Andy returns to Harry, presumably after admitting to his fiancée and his family, his sexuality. He does say as much, but it is clear that he is now committed to a relationship with Harry, and will likely become the Mr. Right that Harry has told him that he hoped in might find in all of his random sexual meetups.

     This film, in short, like many other Indian gay films still today such as My Gay Cousin of 2023, which I watched the other afternoon, serve still primarily a gay propaganda, devoted to the acceptance of Indian culture of gays and their relationships. But there is a vast difference in the narrative, cinematic skills, and intelligent, if rather unbelievable, acting of a film such as Amen, which won several awards upon its release, and a primitive, but well-meaning work such as My Gay Cousin—even if their goals are similar. And despite its over-acting and simplicity of its issues, Amen is an important movie.

 *For a fuller discussion of these events, see my essay on Sridhar Rangayan’s Breaking Free (2015).

Los Angeles, September 26, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).