Knial Saunders | Solitude / 2023

pagan christianity

by Douglas Messerli

 

Knial Saunders (screenwriter and director) Solitude / 2023 [16.29 minutes]

 

Solitude retells a story that has been expressed hundreds of time before, but seems still necessary in the third decade of the 21st century, supposedly a time when in the US, at least, gay sexuality has come to be generally accepted. But we know the truth to be something different.

    Even today, thousands of US parents believe in a pagan religion, not even close to what they describe as true Christianity, that would prefer obscure and misunderstood laws of an ancient civilization to the well-being of their own sons and daughters. Christ reified love has his primary doctrine, yet parents like Augustine (Marlo Stroud) pretends to love by declaring the very nature of her son Zeph (Jael Saran) to be a sin.

    Zeph, like so many young gay people, is not even sure he is homosexual, but he definitely admires and enjoys being around the artist Sol (Da’Von J. Solomon) who is painting a portrait of the young man with whom he is now clearly in love and who, in turn, is unknowingly in love with him. What does someone in Sol’s situation do when a young man he perceives is gay is secretly developing a crush on you? You can send him away, suggesting he work it out by himself, or help guide him to his own feelings without attempting to sway him into the gay sexuality you are certain he is seeking. Empathetic gay men know just how difficult it is to “come out,” or even to fully express emotions that are so openly being expressed in various ways that are yet invisible to the individual who can hardly contain himself. The idolized being is in the strange position of protecting while gradually revealing what the other feels is still a hidden secret. To reject him would be to destroy his burgeoning love; to fully embrace and encourage it is unthinkable to a caring and loving being admired, whose open encouragement would be a betrayal of one of the very reasons for the other’s love.

     It’s a difficult position to be in, and is not always rewarding, particularly if the family is working, as in Zeph’s case, to undermine the natural process of the individual’s discovery of himself. The decisions that are needed to be made must come from within the innocent through a great deal of pain and solitude, and many young men and women can’t literally “come through” that process of admitting their sexuality against the wall of denial that still today the society attempts to build around individual choice. Many go scurrying of, quickly marrying in a heterosexual ceremony to which they many never be able to maintain or fully commit to. The other, the loved one, is always the deceiver, the dangerous tempter or temptress, the hated other out to get hold of or convert the young innocent. Yet the innocent often cannot come to his own realization of self without the other’s love and support.

     At one point in this tale, Sol crosses the boundary before Zeph is quite ready, attempting to kiss the innocent so desiring his kisses before he is quite ready to accept it as a defining designation. A kiss inexplicably defines, in our society, sexuality. To kiss is to love and identify oneself through the implant of the lips upon another being; yet once a relationship is truly established, heterosexual or homosexual, friendly or familial, we just as quickly come to realize that kisses can be merely gestures, a false expression of love. The mother’s kisses in this film pretend to, as she puts it, love the sinner without being able to accept the sin. But since one’s sexual identity is part and parcel of the bodily sinner, such a concept is an implausible expression of love. The hug and kiss means nothing if it cannot be attached to the body on which the kiss is pasted.

     Zeph’s uncle, come to help and support the mother in altering the boy’s behavior can only express what he calls love with a brutal slug across the face. As Sol later puts it, they have already made apparent that their love and it is not something which a sentient being can accept if he values himself.

   Like so many others before him, Zeph is given no choice but to abandon his home and embrace the man he admires, in this case we are led to believe, a truly worthy choice; but in so many other cases, the first love may actually be a manipulator, a liar, someone incompatible with what the young innocent needs in order to further develop.

    Pagan believers push such sons and daughters out the door, revealing only their own failure to embrace what any true faith must accept, the sexual nature and being of the other. Sexual difference is just what it suggests, difference; it is not a sin, a crime, or an offense. Yet so many men and women describing themselves as religious beings never come to comprehend that fact, proving at heart they do not even comprehend what true belief represents.

 

Los Angeles, March 25, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2026).