Charles Whiteley | My Father's Son / 2023

shooting at clay pigeons

by Douglas Messerli

 

Charles Whiteley (screenwriter and director) My Father's Son / 2023 [10 minutes]

 

One has to wonder for whom the short queer film, My Father’s Son, is really intended? Are we about to embrace yet another 1920’s British drama moving back into the territory E. M. Forster and Evelyn Waugh long ago explored, the class differences between British boys in love? Frankly, one has to wonder how many boarding school boys and Cambridge/Oxford queers will run during a gay festival to see this film?

     I suppose there are enough infatuated US boys that love this kind of thing, but here all it’s so obvious what the film is showing us that it seems to be of little interest other than the beautiful Lincolnshire landscape.

     A gamekeeper is watching over the young lord of the house, Jack (Alastair Coughlan), as he attempts to hit clay pigeons, at which he is not very adept. He meets up with the gamekeeper’s son Michael (Forrest Bothwell) carrying his rifle along as well.

     For a few moments they rift about class differences, particularly about the cost of their guns and the number of cars Jack’s father owns; yet all in a way that makes it clear that they have a close relationship that both would like to further develop.

     At the next shooting site, Michael is about to show his prowess, but at the last moment asks Jack to help show him how to shoot. It is a ruse obviously to get Jack to come near and actually embrace him as he pretends to explain how to properly pull the trigger. The moment of their togetherness is performed and filmed quite brilliantly, as the tension between them builds.

     But it is interrupted by gamekeeper (Steve O'Dare), who recognizes immediately what their maneuver indicates, in remedy sending Michael off home, for the moment at least destroying any plans the boys might have had for sharing their sexual attraction. Michael’s father sends his own son away, attending to his titular charge.

     So, we might ask, what is the real issue here? Certainly, Michael’s father is not the first in queer film history to disapprove of his son’s gay tendencies, and surely the two boys might find other ways of meeting up if they are truly bent on it. In Forster’s Maurice, the servant simply climbed up a ladder to get into the bedroom of his wealthier would-be lover. And it’s quite evident Michael is clever, knowledgeable about the animals of the woods as well as the ways of Jack and his class.

     Accordingly, what is all the lovely fuss about? This may be a beautifully filmed short work about an unfortunate incident, but what does it tell us, truly, about these young men and their apparent love for one another? Perhaps that such a love can never flourish, not because they both cannot find a way around their conservative parents, but because of what becomes evident when Jack supports the gamekeeper’s command for Michael to leave, suggesting there is no way to argue or disagree with the older man; it is clear that he will not intervene in the traditional separation that these two must endure.

     Their relationship can never blossom in such an environment. Michael is well aware that there is nothing you can do for a bird that has suffered a rifle shot but let the crows peck at it, to allow nature to put it to death.

     And in this world, class structure is as certain as nature, where there is no room in it for a young ward of the mansion to fall in love with the gamekeeper’s son. Yet, did we truly need another film to tell us that? And to whom is Whiteley attempting to communicate his sad assessment? The Jacks of the world are taught this from the day of their birth. And even the stupidest of us commoners knows that that nothing good can come of shooting at clay pigeons.  

 

Los Angeles, July 27, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).