William Stead | The Last Summer / 2019

the last moments of love

by Douglas Messerli

 

William Stead (screenwriter and director) The Last Summer / 2019 [8 minutes]

 

It’s 1936 in Germany and two young boys, a little old to be doing so but nonetheless enjoying the game of it, are using a sling shot to see if they can hit some tin cans they’ve set up. One of them, Felix, wonders if the other’s father might help him get a job the next year and asks if his friend Ben will be soon joining up in the ranks of the army. Ben doesn’t know, but queries if that is what the other might be planning. Felix responds: “If it means I get to be around all those army boys.”

 

     These two kids are clearly in a homosexual relationship in a time when they cannot yet imagine the dangers. But the film demonstrates how quickly they will need to discover what is just ahead.

       The two head back to Ben’s home to “listen to some music,” obviously having other plans in mind. But even as they head home along the path, they are met up with a young Nazi officer, Heinrich, with whom Felix decides to have some fun, his friend trying to dissuade him to stop his antics. Felix hits Heinrich in the head with a small rock.

       The reaction is immediate as Heinrich turns, calls Felix a “fucking faggot” and knocks him down kicking him with his boot several times while Ben looks on in utter dismay. Heinrich then turns on Ben, calling him a faggot as well, and warns him “Wait until your father finds out.”

      His father, it turns out, is the local commandant, seen a bit earlier typing up the categories for undesirable young German men, including the notorious pink triangle.

      The boy helps his friend, the best he can, to return back to his luxurious home; Felix is clearly seriously hurt and is suffering. But finally, they come staggering into the house, Felix sneaking upstairs as Ben is called by his father. The father, sitting at the end of a long table, typewriter in front of him, seems about to say something, but proffers only the word, “Goodnight.” The father looks back at the sheet of paper on which he is typing, featuring the pink triangle, and we are aware, suddenly, in his stare of surety, that this man is willing even to offer up his son to the cause without even a warning.

       The two boys sit on the floor of their room, separated by a space that might be described as the distance of two bodies of land across an ocean. Felix comments: “Henrich is an ass. You have nothing to worry about. Your father is the commandant.” 

        Ben is now in tears, suffering for everything he suddenly realizes, as Felix reaches out to assure him, “It’s okay,” presumably suggesting that he recognizes that their relationship must now come to an end.

        They hug as Felix assures him “Everything will be okay.” But we know and they know, everything is not okay. Their hug is the embrace of death.

        If Stead’s story is somewhat naïve, telling a story that might never truly have happened given the long, long hostility of the authorities and others of even the Weimar Republic against homosexuality given Paragraph 175, it nonetheless brings forward an interesting historical viewpoint, in which apparently Stead is most fascinated in his filmmaking, that reveals that even the children of such hateful beings were never truly safe. British-born Stead’s film is not about a “last summer” but concerns the very last moments of possibility of love for its youthful heroes.

 

Los Angeles, August 24, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023)