Josh Eliot | Sacrament / 2022

children will listen

by Douglas Messerli

 

Josh Eliot (screenwriter and director) Sacrament / 2022 [22 minutes]

 

This short film might be described as one of the first to deal with the world that US President Trump created, a broken society that must make choices that never before were they asked to make.

     A gay married couple, Tommy (Faye Strange Bascon) and Dustin (Jace Greenwood) have been fairly accepted by Tommy’s religious family, who have come to accept him basically through what appears as their Episcopal orientation. But Dustin’s own religious background, which we never have fully explained, has evidently been far more confrontational, and he has suffered the punishments of attempts at conversion therapy clearly imposed upon him by his family and church.

     The couple has agreed, having just adopted a new baby girl, that they will not involve her in their religious backgrounds until she is of an age to decide for herself. But Tommy’s highly religious, if loving family, insist that she be baptized in the family tradition, celebrating her arrival by presenting Tommy with their traditional baptism bonnet.

    Dustin refuses, and a battle of family and religious tradition suddenly becomes an issue between the two loving men. Even though Tommy backs down, suggesting to his family that he will wait until Dustin is ready, the family intrudes their beliefs upon these two men, along with the battles of Trump supporters storming the capitol with crosses (not something I quite remember), becoming a further issue in the breakdown of the two men’s relationship.

     I have no longer any sympathy with religious indoctrination, and surely side with Dustin; but this short film is truly fair in its attempts to make it clear that not all views of Christianity are the same. After all, Tommy’s family have worked hard to accept their son’s gay sexuality and his marriage to Dustin. Tommy tries to convince Dustin that “We are the good Christians,” yet behind his lover’s back he has arranged for a baptism in the church.

     Dustin, who has actually been the more obvious father to their new child, rushes out, goes to a bar, and nearly falls into sex with a bar stranger. Yet, Eliot’s film being a truly moral consideration of the problem, gives his character the opportunity to bolt, even arriving at the church.

    More importantly, at the last moment Tommy, despite his parents almost masked (this was after all the time of COVID-19) presence and imposing approval, backs out, finally agreeing that it has to be something to which is child decides when she has grown. They have lost their young Christian goat, the sacrifice that so many parents offer up to their alter before the child itself has been involved.

   The two men kiss, and raise up their child to be her own woman, to make her own decisions with regard to religious beliefs. This is a film quite obviously made by a director who grew up in a religious world, but who came to recognize that religion is not a sacrificial rite, but a sacrament to be approached when a child has come into full consciousness. Yes, some churches have come to accept homosexuality, but basically the Christian folk have not been totally accepting, and have over and over shown themselves as a mean and ugly congregation that is not trustworthy of demonstrating the teachings of Christ.

 

Los Angeles, March 30, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).