Tom Bakker | Ayor / 2021

living behind a mirror

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tom Bakker (screenwriter and director) Ayor / 2021 [11 minutes]

 

Much like Thomas Hescott’s 2020 film The Act celebrated and deconstructed an important event in British gay history, so does Dutch director Tom Bakker’s Ayor fictionalize the important 1970 statement against gay discrimination when two young men protested the lack of commemoration of the Netherlands’ celebration of Remembrance Day (May 4th) of gay soldiers and war victims.

      Like Hescott’s film, Bakker’s work is a highly professionally filmed piece of European gay history that helps us to know about how people put themselves on the line in a time when it was difficult and dangerous to do so.

      If one might have thought, given the open attitudes of the Dutch today, that gays in the Netherlands had no difficulties in openly expressing their sexuality, one need only watch this film which presents events from as recent as 1970, toggling back and forth between the before and after of that special day which challenged Dutch traditional values.

      Ad (Angélo Schuurmans) and Enno (Lars Brinkman) are holed up with a back room of a hotel near the main square where the Remembrance Day celebrations take place. Both have determined to give themselves up for the cause, wearing their pink triangles, dressed properly in suits, but knowing that their actions will probably end with them serving 3 months in prison.    

      They are nervous, particularly Enno who begins to question the whole series of events. Finally, Enno’s boyfriend Jan (Thor Braun) shows up with the wreath, kissing Enno and reassuring him of his commitment. But still Enno is frightened about having to give up three months of freedom for his acts.

      In alternating scenes, we watch each of the boys separately being questioned by a police officer (Hein van der Heijden). Ad is basically smug in his refusal to explain who was behind the decision to engage in their protest, at one point when the officer asks if Enno is his boyfriend, answering, “Are you interested?” before finally answering “No,” his only real answer to the policeman’s questions.

      Enno, on the other hand, clearly the deeper thinker of the two and probably the original instigator of the event, responds with elliptical statements which help explain their viewpoints. When the officer asks him why “you people you are so special,” he replies that he often wonders the same thing, why the police flash lights upon them at night when they are making love, why they continue to receive so much of the police’s special attention.

      Back in the waiting room, however, he almost attempts to back out of their plans, Ad engaging him with his imitation of Clint Eastwood preparing for a shootout by licking back his hair, taking out a cigarillo, and suddenly shooting his enemies dead. The two joyfully play at cops and robbers for a moment, falling upon the floor in almost hysterical laughter, brought on by their nervousness. They are interrupted by a hotel worker who has obviously arranged for their cover and access to the celebration at the right moment.

     We see the two doing nothing but carrying out a wreath, this one dedicated to the gay men and women who lost their lives in the war, before we observe what appears to be the actual black-and-white footage of them being wrestled down to the ground by the police and a sailor in front of the crowds, as if they were engaging in an act of the greatest desecration possible. At the end of the film, we are told there were later massive protests on their behalf and “After political deliberations, the public ceremony was changed a year later to include all homosexual, Sinti*, and Roma who had perished during the war.

     The most poignant moment of this film, however, occurs when Enno is being questioned. When he perceives the glass wall next to him, he wonders if people are listening into their conversation on the other side. The officer insists it’s none of his business. But Enno continues on, suggesting that this room, in fact, is much like the world in which he lives. When the officer inquires how this might be, Enno responds:

 “With everything I do, I feel there is someone behind a mirror….watching me. And that feeling makes me question whether or not I can hold hands with my boyfriend when I walk down the street. Whether I can kiss him at the tram stop. Or introduce him to my boss without any trouble. There is always someone behind that mirror. Who watches and judges. You don’t even have to worry about things like that. No one is watching you behind a mirror. You don’t even have that mirror. You asked me why we did this, at the expense of the dead. That is why. I want to live without that mirror, too.”

 

*The Sinti are a Romani group of around 200,000 people living in Germany and Central Europe, and obviously made up a small portion of Dutch population.

 

Los Angeles, February 13, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 13, 2023).