days in the park, nights in hell
by
Douglas Messerli
Matt Moran (screenwriter and director) Underneath
/ 2023 [12
minutes]
Alex
(Matt Moran), a gay man, has recently broken up with his friend and his still
hurting. Nonetheless, he refuses to miss the opportunity to help out a friend,
a divorced woman (Jenny Gill) with two children, by taking her young son,
Wyatt, to the park for an hour or so just so that she can attend to her
daughter and have a little time to herself.
Wyatt
absolutely loves Alex, and the two of them almost perform as father a son for a
short while, the boy obviously needing the company of a male adult before who
he can perform while having fun.
At the park, Alex meets another neighbor,
Nathan (Daniel Collins), a married man, whose young son Cameron is also
swinging next to Wyatt. His wife Jess, soon joins them suggesting it’s time to
go home. But in the meanwhile, Nathan has discovered that Alex is gay, lives
nearby, and is not the father the boy he is watching.
In short, this film would be completely uneventful, even somewhat charming if it stopped almost midway, representing a gentle but lonely gay man helping out a single mom. On the surface, everything in this small urban corner seems quite pleasant.
But we know people are far more complex,
and in the next 6 minutes. Alex takes the young boy home. And later that
evening, as he is cooking his dinner, there is a knock on his door. It’s
Nathan, his hair now let down from his ponytail. He reports that a light fixture
has fallen from their wall and he’s loaned his drill to his brother; might he
borrow Alex’s drill. And, of course, Alex has a drill to loan him. He might has
well have come over to borrow a couple of eggs, so transparent is his visit.
But what is behind it, we can only wonder.
Suddenly Nathan is all over Alex, kissing him with a desperation that
appears to be close to a rape. Alex pushes him off.
There is a long pause as Alex just
struggles to catch his breath.
“What?” demands Nathan, as if it was he
who needed an explanation for being rebuffed.
Now
almost in tears, Nathan shakes his head in the negative.
He is clearly one of the many men I have
written about in these LGBTQ films over the years who has trapped himself or
been trapped into a heterosexual marriage without perceiving the consequences:
in this case a kind of imprisonment that has lasted 11 years and resulted in
the responsibility of two children. Nathan’s desperation is overwhelming as he
breaks down in tears, hardly able to face Alex but needing someone to whom he
can share his sorrow and desire.
Alex does the only thing a caring and empathetic
man can do: hug and hold him close as Nathan literally falls emotionally apart.
There is no end to this, no answer, no easy resolution. All we know is that
Alex’s own emotional difficulties after his breakup with his partner are almost
nothing compared with the years of built up tension and loneliness that Nathan
has had to face. If I have been somewhat unsympathetic for men who have had the
courage to accept their sexuality in my other commentaries, I need to reiterate
how sad, how very sad have been the consequences of their choice. If only we
could live in a world where someone like Nathan could find sexual release from
time to time with other men.
But we know the outcome here is either to
return to his unbearable closet, or harm and even possibly destroy the love of
his wife and children, changing their lives for the worst as well.
If nothing else, perhaps Nathan has at
least now found a friend in Alex with whom he can share the feelings that lie
underneath his façade.
The drill, metaphorically speaking, is perhaps
the most useful tool for Nathan to burrow a way out of the cabinet into which
he has locked himself.
Los
Angeles, December 26, 2025
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).
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