the missing children
by Douglas Messerli
Charles Bukowski (writer), Jonathan Hodgson (director) The Man with the Beautiful Eyes /1999 [animated film]
Several young boys have been told by their
parents not to go near a house in their neighborhood,
perhaps because, as the animator of this
short film hints, at least one child has recently gone missing, a poster of
which we witness.
But of course, being naturally curious and in contradiction to parents who often demand things of their children that make no sense, these boys immediately head off to the dangerous house where they find a forest of bamboo where they love to play Tarzan without a Jane and watch the fattest of goldfish rise to the top of a nearby pool which they feed with pieces of bread.
For weeks they never encounter the owner of
the house. But one day, they hear a shout coming
from the structure: “You goddamn whore!”
And out steps a man who needs a shave, is barefoot, holding a fifth of
whiskey, with a cigar in his mouth. His hair is wild and uncombed. He is about
30. But the most notable thing about him is that “His eyes were bright. They
blazed with brightness.”
The man greets them with the words: “Hey little gentlemen, having a good
time, I hope.”
Over the next several months they continue
to play in the bamboo forest and feed the goldfish bread. But they never see
the man again. The shades remain drawn.
But then one day they discover that the house
has burned to the ground, the water and disappeared and the fat goldfish are
dead and drying out. The bamboo forest has also burned.
They
are convinced that their parents had burned the house to the ground along with
the man in it because it was all too beautiful. “They had been afraid of the
man with the beautiful eyes.”
“And we were afraid then that all through out lives, things like that
would happen, that nobody wanted anybody to be strong and beautiful like that, that
others would never allow it, and that many people would have to die.”
The man with the beautiful eyes is obviously a figure who stands as a
metaphor for the outsider. Yet there is no direct evident that this particular
man was anything but a wild alcoholic with a promiscuous wife, figures who
represented behavior that did not want their children to witness.
Even if Bukowski had so such intention of placing a queer at the center
of his work, more likely presenting a wild sexist alcoholic something like
himself, the director at least allows that other possibility. I know nothing
about the sexuality of the popular British animator, Hodgson, but in his other
films such as Roughouse a closely knit male community is often the focus
of his works.
For the boys, moreover, even in Bukoski’s original work, the major thing
that sets this man apart from their parents is his beauty, his eyes, the
natural masculinity he exudes—all things we might assert that make him
different from their heterosexual parents. Even the way he speaks to then, as “little
gentlemen,” hoping that they are enjoying themselves is far different from the
world of regulations put upon them by their own folks.
What that is precisely is never explained; but his difference, his
outsiderness is so dangerous, they believe, that ultimately he has to die for
it, his world be utterly destroyed. And they realize that unless they too
become their parents, they too may have to suffer the consequences. And in the
boys’ perception that most certainly is something queer, something not part of
their parents’ lives.
I
wouldn’t necessarily describe this as a “gay” film, but its implications
equally apply to the LGBTQ+ world.
Los Angeles, December 24, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (December 2025).
