Nathaniel Turner | Let Me Go / 2015

love and despair

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nathaniel Turner (screenwriter and director) Let Me Go / 2015 [8 minutes]

 

This drama about AIDS, located in the 1980s epidemic, is a moving and terrifying testimony to those difficult days.

    The film begins with some statements that characterize the new disease the suddenly begin appearing in the early 1980s:

 

     “Centers for Disease Control publicity announces that a contagious for of cancer is spreading within the homosexual community.

     “Scientists do not know the cause of the disease, but strong suspect it is a virus.

     “Hospitals, police, and fireman are issued masks to wear in treating the infectious homosexual patients.

     “Later that year, CDC names the virus ‘AIDS.’

     “Scientists believe that a vaccine will be produced within two years.”

     

   The film proper begins in a Santa Monica apartment in 1985 with Philip Daniels (Jimmy Dipola) entering the room with a glass of orange juice and a small slice of cake, wishing his lover, Christian Nerron (Matthew Olsen), a man with Kaposi sarcoma lesions showing on his face and a cane in hand, busy packing up a suitcase. He is determined that he wants his lover to leave him that very day.

 

    Philip wonders where he would go. Putting his arms around him, he asks “Wo would take care of you.” Christian pulls away, insisting it’s not going to make any difference. “There’s not going to be any cure.”

    “I’ve had four chemos, two experiments, and none of it has done a thing.”

    He argues that even his dropping out of school has been only to live with a corpse. Christian touches his lover’s face. “Go back to your family.”

     Philip responds, “You are my family. We gave up our families so we could be together.”

     They briefly embrace, but again the sick man pulls away, insisting Philip leave or that he himself will leave, as he takes the suitcase and tosses it into the other room.

    Falling to the floor, Christian insists: “This is all my fault. I did this. And now I’ve dragged you down with me. It was meant to be a fling. That’s all. But you, you can’t let me go.”

     Philip insists that it was all in the past.

   “I am the past,” Christian declares. Again, he pushes his lover away, this time moving to the bathroom and locking the door, Philip pleading with him to open up. Finally shouting out to him, as inside Christian runs a bath, picks up a hair dryer, plugs it in and clearly prepares to electrocute himself. The entire film turns mute except for the pounding musical score, Philip struggling with the door handle, Christian himself terrified of what he is about to do as the electric device moves nearer, seemingly of its own will. Philip, by this time on the floor in desperation, whispers: “I love you.”

      Christian finally opens up and walks out, actually fearing the suicide as much as the slower death he is experiencing. The men again hug, both now in tears, Christian whimpering “I’m so scared.”

    The film ends with the 2015 statistics: “78 million infected, 39 million died.” At the time of this review, 2026, the same statistics world-wide read: 92.2 million infected, 44.2 million people have died. Except for Tuberculosis, Smallpox in the early part of this century, and the Black Plague of the Middle Ages, AIDS has been one of the most the lethal diseases of all time. And we still have no known full cure, despite our government, cutting money world-wide for research and further protection in areas of the world where people are most infected.

    AIDS killed off almost an entire generation in the US of some of the most creative and talented young people of the 1980s and 1990s. Is it surprising that, after watching several dozens of AIDS movies, even a work as unevenly acted and melodramatic as this one, moves me to tears?

 

Los Angeles, October 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2026).