Keith Hodder | Rift / 2013

caught

by Douglas Messerli

 

Keith Hodder (screenwriter and director) Rift / 2013 [6 minutes]

 

Keith Hodders’s short film Rift (2013) might almost be said to represent that 1940s, early 50s world I have described throughout these pages, when young men were expected to be married without even the thought of possibly exploring anything else in their lives.

     Colton (Ari Blinder) comes out to the small front porch of his small suburban home for a cigarette smoke; we can hear the sound of children in the background, silenced by the closing of the door.

     Indeed the movie might almost be described as a silent film as he sits in the sunny morning light enjoying his cig, looking out onto the empty streets and the snug little homes across.

    Suddenly a man appears on the sidewalk and stops, looking directly at our married hero, clearly someone whom he know but dare not go any further. In full public view the two stare down one another, Colton now breaking into a kind of beautiful half-reluctant smile, while the other, according to the credits named Ridley (Zach Sale) begins to not-so-subtly diddle himself. Colton’s smile becomes wider and the two continue staring at one another in what is clearly looks of lust.

    Why his apparently gay lover and has shown up on this particular day is never explained, but when Ridley hears the wife’s voice in the house, evidently trying to quiet down her “boys,” the smile disappears for a moment as he suddenly seems intent upon moving up the front lawn sidewalk to join his friend, Colton shaking his head in a regretful expression of “no, you can’t.”

      The smile has also disappeared from his face, as he momentarily closes his eyes in an expression of clear pain for being unable to obtain what he wants. His wife’s voice, as she calls out to him almost brings him to tears and he looks up to see his friend has walked off.

      A deeply forlorn look transforms his face, as his wife suddenly appears, wondering what he is doing “out there,” he replying with the usual excuse, “I just wanted to get some air.” She hugs and tells him she loves him, turning to go in, as he says, long after the immediate response she might have expected, “I love you too.” But tears of deep regret almost do well up in his eyes as he thinks obviously of the love he cannot share—at least that morning—and which he has to hide for his entire life.

     We generally do not think of gay or bisexual married man as victims of homophobia, in part, because they have been cowards in not accepting their sexual identity and in pretending that they are exclusively heterosexual. But if we can forgive them for their own destruction and other’s lives, we must recognize them also as fellow sufferers doomed by the societal and religious practices that locks them into a marriage until death do them part.

      And the pain they suffer and bring upon their wives when they are discovered or finally tire of their own deceptions is somehow incommensurate with their crimes, as they, as well they are often torn between the love of their wives and children and their own innate sexual desires. Very little room is given them for redemption. Nor for the wife who discovers she prefers the company of other women. The societal institution that marriage defines is often brutal in its claims.

      The rift to which the title refers is not necessarily between husband and wife, but husband or wife against him or herself, between the societal conventions and those who accepted their delimitations.

      It is not accidental that at least two short films about this subject are titled Caught (one in 2008 and the other in 2011).

 

Los Angeles, March 1, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2022).