now and then
by Douglas Messerli
Having just watched Irish director Harry
Lighton’s 11-minute film, I feel, as a gay man, that I have just been punched
in the gut—or even worse hit with a steal bar over the head, as happens to the
sympathetic Catholic priest, Seamus (Diarmuid Noyes) at the end of this
startlingly revealing film about gay hate crimes.
Although rather early on in this film you quickly perceive—despite the
sometimes almost impenetrable Cork dialect for Americans—that this heavily
smoking, perhaps a bit of a heaving-drinking priest—accompanying his young
nephew, Conor (Lalor Roddy) who is gay, his mother described as sending
everyone in the neighborhood a gift without so much as a card to her own son.
It is the day after Christmas, boxing day, and Conor clearly feels boxed in.
We
don’t yet know to where they are traveling, but his priest uncle has just told
his flock that, while in his own childhood boys and girls were dressed up each
year to kill a small wren as a symbolic transformation into new possibilities,
that it was a truly brutal act. In current days, the wren has become a kind of
puppet as opposed to the real bird, yet the tradition continues with all of its
dark undertones of killing the innocent in order to sustain the society at
large.
Despite the fact the Conor himself smokes, he somewhat agitatedly asks
his passenger whether he intends to smoke the entire way.
Lighton casts their voyage in this short cinematic work as a kind of
mystery in several ways. Is the somewhat grizzly uncle also gay? And to where
are they traveling, perhaps a secret meeting place? These are careful clues
that suggest that something is already amiss, particularly since the priest is
nearly constantly straightening up the collar of his holy order, suggesting
that he is not only uncomfortable with it, but perhaps being chocked by his
pastoral demands.
We
are even more startled, soon after, to discover that the goal of this travels
is a regional prison, where they are forced to sit in a waiting room wherein
the others, people waiting to see their own incarcerated family and friends,
keep snapping pictures on their cellphones of Conor, who evidently has now
received some infamous fame among the locals.
His
final nearly violent outburst gives us some clue of what he and his lover, the
prisoner, Malky (Fionn Walton) have had to face from Cork society. It is post
2015, when the Irish (not a court or high command as in most other countries)
freely voted to allow gays to get married. Although it took a few more battles,
the prison systems allowed the same rights to their internees.
Accordingly, it comes as kind of shock when we realize that the priest
has accompanied his nephew to the prison to marry the two, Malky having been
imprisoned only because, like Conor, he has become argumentative being about
those many individuals who have not shared the views of the general Irish
public. Change, this movie carefully says, without any heavy statements, is
slow to come.
The
most beautiful scene of the film is when the two lovers are finally able to
meet together for the marriage, and by the guards are begrudgingly allowed to
share a number of deeply felt kisses.
The
marriage vows are performed, and the viewer can simply hope that Malky will
soon be released, the couple living out their lives in the bliss of their love.
Yet
the moment Conor and Seamus leave the prison walls, Malky is attacked by other
prisoners who write—we don’t quite know by what method—“Just Married” across
his butt.
It
reminds me of the terrible memory expressed by a young man in the movie Kinsey,
where a he describes his family members literally branding him and his friend
for his gay sexuality.
Hearing
the ruckus on his cellphone, Conor turns back to the prison in an attempt to
save his husband from further imprisonment, while Seamus begins to move forward
to a local bar they have agreed to visit for a pint of Guinness. It is a tragic
move forward, as he is struck with that metal bar by an angry bigot and,
apparently, is killed, the movie ending with the priest bleeding with blood
flowing from his head on the street. Only a flutter of his eyes makes us hope
that he might survive.
I
have often described that Howard’s and my life has been without any obvious
sexual prejudice, that we were greeted into the artistic communities in the
urban areas in which we lived with open minds. And I still believe that to be
true.
Yet, only a couple of years ago when I visited a friend, a major choral
musical conductor, he slightly bemoaned the fact that he took me, a young but
precocious 18-year-old, to a faculty party. I didn’t even remember the fact; I
had been already used to working with elderly faculty members through my jobs
in the university Registration and Admissions offices. But suddenly I wondered,
had he lost tenure or simply been fired for his actions? He’d gone on to become
the conductor of now that he had just retired from his position as the
conductor of a major US vocal organizations. What had he meant by recalling up
this fact from more than 52 years earlier? Guilt for me (I felt none) or for
his own career?
Even more recently, without intention, I temporarily “outed” a rather
well-known actor on Facebook, who declared that he was glad he hadn’t known me
earlier or I might have ruined his career. To me, the idea was unconceivable.
So many actors were gay or lesbian, and, strangely enough, we had never even
discussed the issue; I just presumed the truth. And surely most of his
colleagues must have known that as well. In the old days it was what the LGBT
community described as “an open secret.”
I
knew as a child back in Iowa, that when the evil Louella Parsons scolded a
certain A-list actor for frequenting the Sunset Boulevard pick-up spots, I knew
she must have meant Rock Hudson. And George Chakiris had been picked up for gay
solicitation. Tab Hunter and other gay boys had been seen cruising down the
avenues by many local observers (my friend Paul Vangelisti among them). And our
Washington, D.C. friend Bob Orr had had a sexual relationship with Tony Perkins.
Cary Grant was now an elderly member in this fraternity. So, what was the
issue?
Charles Bernstein once described me as having “outed” the poet John
Ashbery. But I had no intention of “outing” him; I thought everyone must have
known, and when a poet calls you for the telephone number of a gay friend, how
can you imagine anything else?
I
presume because of Howard’s and my so open acceptance of ourselves, that I just
couldn’t imagine the fears of those that came before us, fears not only for
what happens in Lighton’s film, but for how they would be perceived in terms of
their careers. They’d had to face down hate, like the characters of this
contemporary film, day after day. Howard and I had become so open that perhaps
we might have conceived of as “straight.”
We
had basically shrugged an unseen prejudice off—even when, after telling my
parents about our relationship, they got back into the car and immediately
drove off back from Washington, D.C. to Iowa. They fled us in utter fear, I
felt, clearly from their own bigotry.
From one quick generation to another, the major changes in our society
do not so quickly shift as we’d like to believe. A simple decade can mean
acceptance, or in Lighton’s film, in rejection and even death. Gays, lesbians,
and certainly transgender folk still today suffer hate and often even death
from their sexual orientations. If Howard and I have been basically blessed, or
sometimes perhaps just oblivious to the hate surrounding us, so many other
young men and women have been faced with familial rejection and forced to
encounter a cold world that isn’t, despite these more open times, so very
accepting.
Wren
Boys painfully reminded me of this and made me realize that for those of
just a few years older than Howard and I were, how difficult it was to simply
negotiate one’s life. And today it still remains a difficult negotiation around
the world.
Los Angeles, January 3, 2020
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January
2020).
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment