by Douglas Messerli
Evan Randall Green (screenplay), Evan Randall Green
(director) Der Brief (The Letter) / 2008 [8 minutes]
The story of Australian director Randall Green’s short, 8-minute film,
such as it is, appears to take place in a rural community in the late 1920s and
early 1930s. The more popular of the two boys Adrian (Dominic Cocciolone) who
obviously have been having gay sexual intercourse, has sent a letter to his
sexual partner, Patrick (Jake West), already perceived as a town freak for his
obvious homosexual behavior.
The letter has made Patrick, for the first time feel as if his love for
the other boys was “normal” and that he is not the only one who feels the way
he does. Accordingly, he has shared the letter with friends at school, much to
the shock of Adrian.
The brief encounter between the two of them centers not only on how
Adrian will now be shunned by his community and his father, but will himself be
labelled as Patrick has been as a queer.
Since this film appears to have been
shot in German, the first time I saw this film I suspected that the boys might
be part of a religious community such as the Mennonites or the Amish. But there
is no evidence of that, and the boys discuss gay sexuality in terms that do not
at all seem antiquated, the outsider accusing Adrian of being a coward, not
being able to accept his own feelings, and, finally, being no different from
all the others, which leads him, finally, to tear up the beloved epistle and
walk away at film’s end.
Certainly, there are no signs of
official community punishment or ostracization. And the problems the writer of
the letter will have to face seem to be primarily of the run-of-the-mill
homophobia shared by most people in such small rural communities.
We cannot make light of the effects,
however, of this shared community sentiment, for it has cost both of them their
friendship and perhaps the only love they might find that satisfies their
sexual desires. And a tell-tale sign of the anger Adrian will meet at home is
revealed when Patrick notes that he is walking in the other direction from his
home. We can only imagine Adrian later marrying a woman leading to years of
dissatisfaction for both of them, with utter frustration and disappointment for
the male, and a possible divorce of the couple. Or, even worse, perhaps he will
be forced to leave the community and fend, as a young man, for himself.
I only wish that his short, with an excellent musical score, might have
better explored the sources of the homosexual hysteria that will alter both of
their lives.
Los Angeles, March 1, 2022
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blot
(March 2022).
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