the prince of the apocalypse
by Douglas Messerli
Martin Sherman (screenplay), Nancy Meckler (director) Indian
Summer (aka Alive and Kicking) / 1996
At first
Nancy Meckler’s Indian Summer, known in the US as Alive and Kicking
(because of the Mike Binder Indian Summer from 1993), seems like another
early-to-mid 90s AIDS film that compares nicely with Philadelphia and The
Band Played On, both from 1993 as what I describe as the “second wave” of
AIDS movies. The major figure of this film, Tonio (Jason Flemyng), a lead
dancer of a modern dance company, is HIV-positive and has lost his lover and
numerous friends to AIDS and now is about to lose his closet friend Ramon
(Anthony Higgins)— who most believe is also his lover but as he describes it
has gone beyond that to a deep brotherly love.
At one
point he and his female buddy Millie (Diane Parish) gossip about all of the
company members in a manner that you might imagine and are, in fact, encouraged
to believe are all having affairs and relationships with one another,
homosexual and heterosexual. Millie is herself lesbian and has apparently just
broken up with her lover.
In the first episodes of this film,
accordingly, we are presented scenes about dance, including a meeting with the
dance company’s founder and major choreographer, Luna (Dorothy Tutin) who is
now suffering from severe Alzheimer’s and is herself unable to lead the company
into the future that Ramon might been able to. In these scenes we get to know
the company members quite intimately, even following them into the showers.
When the performances at night are over,
Tonio, Millie, and the company manager Tristan (Bill Nighy) rush to the
hospital to cheer up the Karposi-suffering Ramon. As they have to admit, what
with Ramon’s illness and Luna’s condition the future of their world does not
look positive. The only positive sign is attached to the terrible HIV that has
begun to show up in Tonio’s legs and his stormy pessimistic view of his life
ahead. Sex for him seems to now be an impossibility, and even the new drugs
which have become available that are helping to extend lives, he chooses to
refuse because of the effects they may have on his bodily coordination.
Almost as soon as we come to know this
group of dancers, they receive a call from the hospital reporting that Ramon is
dying, and rushing en masse to his side they perform the rituals they
have gone through for so many of their friends, talking them into death, and
simply being there to help one another bear the pain of losing yet another
friend with whom they have daily worked and deeply loved. A nurse scolds them
for trying to communicate with a man who can no longer hear them, they
responding that at this point they are highly experienced pros when it comes to
death and know the territory surely as well as she does, quieting her up.
Yet all of them have committed their
entire lives to Luna’s group, living dance morning, afternoon, and evening; and
even later, as their only method of release from the various pains of body and
soul, they go “dancing” in the gay bars.
So likeable and truly beautiful are all
these dancers and their dying friend that we can hardly imagine how the film
will suddenly take a turn into a more mundane relationship involving far less
beautiful bodies and irrepressible energy beginning with their night at the
club.
The beautiful Tonio is obviously a club
favorite with several men attempting to make a date with him, all of whom he
off-handedly refuses. Indeed one might interpret his behavior as representing his self-centeredness were it
not clear that Tonio is so obviously conceited that such an analysis would be
meaningless. He is beautiful and he knows it; but since he is also dying
probably sooner than all the others, he commands a central sense of affection
and admiration, which strangely some of those who are still healthy resent. His
attitude is obviously one of seizing the day.
After turning down and away from several
handsome boys Tonio comes face to face with Jack (Antony Sher), a short and
stocky, bald and bearded man who seems to have known Tonio’s beloved Ramon, the
fact of which immediately arouses his interest and suspicions—at the funeral a
couple have obviously crashed the event claiming to have been in Paris with
Ramon, frauds since Ramon had never been to Paris. And he has also quite
literally run into Jack at the funeral, no one recognizing who he might be,
with Tonio commenting “He’s certainly not a dancer,” and Millie wondering
whether he might not be a trick. Tonio comments, “Not his type.”
In a sense he is intrigued also by the
clever responses he receives by someone who seems not as enchanted with him as
are all the others, yet still has a connection to his world. At one point. In
fact, one might describe Tonio, as Jack almost does, as almost being the
self-centered Prince of the Apocalypse. What he actually says, when the two
find themselves alone together in a side room, is, “On closer look you do not
strike me as that sexy.” When Tonio later leaps on his lap and gives him a
kiss, asking “how was that?” Jack responds “You’re too conceited.”
The two again oddly end up alone, apart
from all the others, when finally Tonio demands to know how he knew Ramon, Jack
admitting that he is a therapist and Ramon had come to see him for counseling.
Tonio can hardly believe the “joker” works by day as a therapist.
Yet they wind up together at a nearby
coffee shop to sober up, Tonio from his spent energy and Jack from the gin he
has slugged down throughout the evening. Jack finally explains that he is an
AIDS therapist and daily deals intimately with people who have AIDS, revealing
why he is hardly taken aback when Tonio tells him, as if to get rid of him,
that he is HIV-positive, Jack arguing that every sexual partner should be
thought as being just that. But the possibility of a hook-up appears to go no
further, with Tonio suddenly admitting that he has been flirting, but he’s now
tired of it, as he walks away.
Meanwhile, back at the dance studio
Tristan has decided, after the summer break, to stage an older but renowned
piece, “Indian Summer,” which Luna choreographed from Ramon years before,
Tristan desiring for the company to go out of business in style. He plans to
feature Tonio and another dancer Vincent (Aiden Waters) in the major roles of
two male lovers (Luna, having lost memory of the dance itself, describes the
work: “It’s about queers, and queers have made my dance company great. Queers
have the gift of laughter, as one of the dancers attempts to control his
guffaws). Arguing against Tonio’s outright rejection of the idea, Tristan
explains that they will recruit an older dancer Duncan, who performed the other
role in the original production, to explain the details of the movements.
We soon begin to perceive, moreover, that
the real joys of this film are in precisely such details along with the kind particulars
of their behavior I have begun to mention above. For Meckler’s film has
suddenly morphed from a story about AIDS to a work centered on a love
relationship that outwardly makes no sense, as Jack shows up after the last of
Tonio’s performances for the current season, and almost inexplicably the two
find solace in one another, having sex, sharing a bed, and finally an apartment
as a couple, even while that designation itself becomes a bone of contention
between them.
I will spare the reader the specific
details which make this movie so very rich in the viewing of the work, but in summary, I’ll reveal that Jack finally
convinces Tonio to vacation in Greece with him, and the two begin to realize,
in the glorious white light of a Greek summer sun and surrounded by cultural
monuments to a great world that no longer exists, that aside from their clever
jests and significant verbal parries, they are both terribly selfish men, Tonio
having chosen Jack, a man who he can safely describe as not “his type” because
he does not represent the world of beautiful bodies which have constantly
betrayed him through their deaths, and can depend on the down-to-earth
hard-working AIDS therapist to be there as his illness begins to progress.
Jack, on the other hand, has been awarded
a beautiful and sexy lover he might never have imagined as well as a real
person with whom he can apply his true expertise as opposed to the empty world
of evaporating finances and paperwork which is what the AIDS-related job has
become.
Tonio cannot at all comprehend the deep
thirst for alcohol that doctors, nurses, and therapists have acquired in their
frustrating encounters with the death of their AIDS patients on a daily basis, realizing
that things could be different if only authorities might take the disease more
seriously and provide financial support. It was at this moment when doctors and
therapists began to perceive that there were finally restorative if not
curative medicines on the horizon but that governments had put the “gay”
disease at a low priority, dooming people just like Tonio and Ramon to death.
Jack cannot, on the other hand,
comprehend why Tonio is not as angry as he is, that he has focused any
political anger instead on his attempts to mold and shape his body into
movements that represent the great stories of love and death.
Their clash by night, so to speak, is the
age-old struggle between politics and art, an irresolvable battle played out in
despair by both sides.
The most moving moments of this film are
when they finally sit down in an attempt to thrash out their differences, the
nearly always clever protector Jack finally breaking down into convulsive sobs
of a despair which now only the artist can help to qualm.
When on the very day before the premiere
of “Indian Summer” Jack wakes up unable to move his body, suffering from a
brain nerve condition that is curable and not directly related to AIDS, but
which nonetheless will prevent him from dancing, we almost want to shout that
an injustice has been served, surely the script might have suggested another
route to our comprehension of the frailty of arts to heal. Strangely, it is the lost Luna, facing the
strange lunar eclipse of forgetfulness, who offers an odd solution: “Why does
he have to move his legs?"
And suddenly this film becomes also a
powerful tale of physical impairment, as Tristan selects other members of the
company to carry Tonio about space as he, having somewhat recovered the
movement of his limbs, makes the important physical gestures of the love and
longing which the dance portrays. The dance of the two male lovers, in fact,
becomes far more homoerotic and sensuous as we observe Tonio being borne aloft
by two other male dancers and he encounters and makes love with his male
partner.
The film ends with a now limping hero,
newly released from the hospital, insisting that he and Jack walk home instead
of taking the taxi, as he finally speaks of a future in which he will have to
teach dance rather than perform it. And Jack, in turn, promises him that he
will be there, no matter what happens. At least, although the movie doesn’t say
as much, Tonio can begin on a regiment of drugs which will give him a longer
life, and, as the Julian Hernández movie I watched the other day argues now
provides individuals with a life every bit as long as those who are not
HIV-positive. As they walk evidently past the point when they should have made
a turn toward their apartment, Jack asks where they are going, Tonio replying
that he has no idea, but hopes Jack will join him.
Of course, it’s a sentimental metaphor,
but also an important one for a generation finally beginning to perceive that
some relief for AIDS was in the near future if only…. After decades of darkness
for that generation, it seems almost criminal, but may still be useful for a
younger generation to suggest that such a moment as something like coming out
of quarantine after two years of COVID-19. The fears and terrors are still
present but renewal seems possible through our commitment and love of our
fellow beings.
Los
Angeles, August 24, 2022
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (August 2022).
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