Jacob Brown | Blinders / 2011

pretty young things

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jacob Brown (screenwriter and director) Blinders / 2011 [10 minutes]

 

Jacob Brown’s short film Blinders is a short film seemingly itself affected by its central metaphor. It pretends complexity and applies an often-expressed trope that doesn’t even explore its own possibilities.

     A couple (Nathaniel Brown and Byrdie Bell) attend a local bell where their eyes both take in the beauties of a local. almost transsexual boy beauty (Luke Worall).

      Although the couple returns home for sex, it’s clear that the male is totally attracted to the boy, and soon after we see the two engaged in homosexual sex. Can Brown return to his Juliet after his clear homosexual transgression?

      The intruding boy himself describes the situation in terms of the horses of Central Park, which are led on through life to play out their role with blinders, unable to change course, which, if nothing else suggests that he sees his young momentary Romeo as someone who will not be able to alter the sexual course of normality.

      One might have thought this short work would have explored the possibilities of bisexuality, but it is far more interested in its quite pretty images and sexual quirks than actually dealing the issues of sexuality about which it hints.

      And in the end, there’s little chance that the “romance” of this film will provide anyone with anything but a one-night stand.

      Sorry, but this film is just fluff. And one doesn’t get truly excited by anything going on in the movie unless you can’t control yourself over seeing pretty young things.

 

Los Angeles, November 3, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (November 2024).