getting over it
by Douglas Messerli
The Youth Panel of the Old Museum Art Centre,
Belfast (screenwriters and directors) Wasteland: Michael’s Story / 2016 [9
minutes]
Michael (Caolan Owens) is facing difficult
times. He is a gay boy in a seemingly intolerant family in Belfast, the father
(Fra Gunn) and mother (Gail McCorriston) not only unable to listen to his
concerns but also unable to communicate with one another ever since the suicide
one year earlier of Michael’s brother Kevin. We don’t know what was the cause
of suicide, but we can only wonder was Kevin also gay or perhaps just a victim
to the general intolerance of his parents.
As
a celebration of their second month together, David has purchased a T-shirt
which he jokingly demands Michael wear. It reads “Some People Are Gay. Get Over
It.”
After another night of his father speaking mostly to the TV, Michael
leaves the house. Upon returning, he observes his mother outside his bedroom,
his father going through his bedside drawers. Having suspected drugs, they’ve
found the T-shirt, Michael admitting that he’s gay and confronting both of them
for pretending to be a family for the long year since his brother’s death.
Angry and hurt, he again escapes the house in the dark of night.
Evidently, he is hit by a car—only foretold in the film by a
fast-speeding car rushing in front of him as he stops by a pedestrian walkway.
Michael wakes up in the hospital to find his friend David beside him and his
parents there as well, finally having come to accept their son for being gay
and permitting his friend to remain by his side.
A
film funded by the British Film Institute (BFI), the “Into Film Shorts” program
was supported by a lottery through the UK Film Council’s First Light Movies
Initiative which permitted 15- to 19-year-olds to make films guided by
professionals. Accordingly, Wasteland, is well-meaning but clearly
simplistic in its reformatory intentions. As heartfelt as it is, we don’t get
to truly know Michael and David well-enough to let them completely into our
emotions, and they become notable stick-figures for the problems facing many
young boys of their age. Nonetheless, one couldn’t imagine a better-intentioned
program, evidently no longer in operation given that their Facebook and Twitter
(now X) accounts seems to have vanished. But others of their films, not all
LGBTQ-centered, are available on YouTube at the time of this essay.
Los Angeles, August 12, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August
2023).
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