Gary Halvorson (director) / Robert Carsen (stage director) | Der Rosenkavalier / 2017 [The Metropolitan Opera HD-live broadcast]

yes, yes

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hugo van Hofmannsthal (libretto), Richard Strauss (music), Robert Carsen (stage director), Gary Halvorson (director) Der Rosenkavalier / 2017 [The Metropolitan Opera HD-live broadcast]

 

For years when I’ve thought about Richard Strauss’ great opera, Der Rosenkavalier, I have always imagined it as primarily a slightly sad lyric testament to the passage of time, as an almost Proustian acceptance of the end of not only one’s own vitality, but of the era in which one, by birth, has come to represent. That is certainly true for the great Marschallin, in Strauss’s original a wealthy princess of the 18th-century, wife to the head of the Austrian military (a force always central to Austrian life), and lover to a young, only 17-years-of-age, count, a remarkably handsome cavalier, who regularly brings her roses. 

     The remarkable aspect of this opera, I have always imagined, is that the Marschallin’s love transcends even her own happiness, a recognition that there will inevitably come a time in her intense affair with her younger lover that he will perceive her for what she is, an older woman moving towards death at the very moment that he is just coming into a full recognition of his life. In the first act, when the Marschallin (epitomized in Renée Fleming’s performance of her over many a year) recognizes that she loves the young Octavian (performed by another consummate singer and actor, Elīna Garanča—having played the role, she admits for the 17 years and 2 months, precisely her character’s age) and that she must someday give him up to some younger woman with a fresher beauty with whom he falls in love, the opera seems to sum up the facts of all of life. Love, beauty, wealth, whatever one believes to be of value is impermanent, and those who live life best know when to release their grasp of maintaining those qualities.

     The director of this new MET Opera production, Robert Carsen, has, I think quite correctly reset these events into Vienna’s fin de siècle period, a decade before Strauss’ own creations and those of similar-minded creators such as Arthur Schnitzler, the early writings of Robert Musil, and, of course, Sigmund Freud. Certainly, the rising militarism of that period resonates with the opera’s own focus on off-stage violence and the antics of Baron Ochs (Günther Groissböck) and his soldier friends.

    What I always forget is that this opera is also, and perhaps at heart, a raucous social satire for most of the next two acts, and even within the first act when the lovers’ transcendent interludes are interrupted, first by the completely insensitive Ochs, and then by the numerous petitioners, peddlers, and simple “riff-raff” that the Marschallin must daily face after her coffee and chocolates. Great lady that she is, the Marschallin survives not only her daily petitioners, waving them off with gracious gestures of hand and neck, but even partially escaping the rude and blustering bleats of her obviously hated cousin, Ochs—who boasts of his upcoming  marriage to a wealthy arms-manufacturers, Faninal’s (Markus Brück) daughter—by playing along with Octavian’s pretense of being his lover’s chambermaid (a noted incident in which an opera “pants” character—a soprano playing the young male lover—is forced to appear in “drag” of the gender she truly is).

    The Marschallin saves the day, while the crude Ochs attempts to seduce the newly-minted Mariandel, by suggesting that she cannot afford to give up her ill-conceived servant, but that she will provide her cousin instead with Mariandel’s handsome noble brother, Octavian, to serve as Ochs “Rosenkavalier,” to present the traditional silver roses of family custom for all wedding engagements.

   It is after Och’s departure that the Marschallin, the utter opposite of her idiot cousin, suddenly perceives that she is quickly growing old, singing her major aria, “Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding” in which she attempts to tell Octavian that nothing lasts forever, and that there will come a time when, despite his protestations, he too will move on.

    Of course, the ardent boy utterly denies it, and she is forced to console him, instead, and he consoling the distraught woman who sometimes gets up in the middle of the night to stop the clocks.

   These are the scenes that I still believe to be the heart of Der Rosenkavalier, but, in fact, the Marschallin soon after disappears from sight for nearly two acts, as the comedy’s rude mechanicals (to steal Shakespeare’s term) come forward to battle it out. For the first few moments of Act II, as Octavian meets Sophie and immediately falls in love, the gentle irony of Strauss’ work is maintained. But moments later, as Ochs enters, to put it simply, all hell breaks loose, as the Baron proves himself as the brute he truly is to his would-be fiancée Sophie. As Morely described her in an inter-act interview, she is clearly an early feminist, who simply cannot abide the absolute self-centeredness and the misogynistic behavior of Ochs. Carsen clearly has made every attempt to underline the similarities between this self-inflated fool with a certain contemporary American president. If nothing else, we can now clearly recognize the type.

     But the series of slapstick actions that follow, including Fanlin’s presentation of home-bound gun-turrets, the Keystone Cop-like antics of Och’s personal soldiers, and general undefined chaos, as Sophie is groped, pulled, pummeled, and finally thrown to the ground in the ever-shifting emotions of Ochs, represent something I might describe as outside the tone of the opera. That Carsten’s Ochs is a healthy antidote to the usual operatic depiction of an old oafish man, I’ll agree; but there can be no doubt that this moves not only toward the campy but is definitely “over-the-top.”

     And these qualities grow even more extreme in the beginning of the next act, played out in a brothel (the prudish MET-HD printout describes it as “a house of ill repute”), which, in this production seems closer to the Weimar Republic’s cabarets than to a Vienna fin de siècle establishment. The attempt to bring the dense Ochs to his senses involves Octavian, got up into a costume that reminds one of Marlene Dietrich, a male-drag orchestra right out of Some Like It Hot, numerous undressed and unwound floozies, a loud-mouthed Madame (Tony Stevenson), again in drag, and gangs of a child chorus, a pleading ex-wife, dancers, waiters, food-sellers, lackeys, and god knows who else to scare the Baron half-to-death, before, once more, the even more beautiful Marschallin enters the fray to save the day and send the Baron packing in utter embarrassment—although, we perceive, his comeuppance will probably not ever enter this man’s pea-sized brain.

       Once again, the opera returns to its transcendent roots, as Fleming, Garanča, and Morley join together for an all-female trio that sings of love, acceptance, and forgiveness simultaneously. Strauss’ tinkling music, with its slightly discordant descending melodies says it all, even suggesting that the intense love now shared by the young Sophie and Octavian may also one day, too, come to an end. But, at least, as the Marschallin perceives, Sophie and Octavian will be good together, if even for a too little while.

      The three major singers, Garanča (who is, after all, the lead in this opera), Fleming and Morley couldn’t have been better, and the audience—knowing that this was the very last time they would see the first two in these roles—applauded enthusiastically, tossing small paper placards down from the balconies, and tossing flowers upon the stage. Their performances were so remarkable that I am sure that the MET audience (all of whom seemed pasted to their seats, except for their standing cheers) were in tears, as was I. And everyone, I believe, perceived this was perhaps one of the great Der Rosenkavaliers of all time.

    If only the director had been a bit more subtle in his comic inventiveness. For despite the manic energy of those interactions between Ochs and the others, there seemed to have been no genuine laughter. Surely a somewhat lighter touch might have redeemed the central characters’ trials and tribulations. This production seemed to suggest that Strauss’s and von Hofmannsthal’s 1911 opera was simply a farce surrounded by slightly sentimental lovers. But then young lovers always behave that way, observes Sophie’s father, to which the Marschallin responds: “Yes, yes”—the very last words of Fleming’s long habitation of her character.

 

Los Angeles, May 14, 2017

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (May 2017).

Sarah Al Atassi | Mauvais genre (Not That Kind of Guy) / 2020

other kinds of beings

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sarah Al Atassi (screenwriter and director) Mauvais genre (Not That Kind of Guy) / 2020 [26 minutes]

 

Living in an industrial suburb of Tours, France, Léto (Sohan Pague) is trapped in a world in which he works at a local art house movie theater run by a beast of a manager who hates cinema. The entire neighborhood seems hostile and alien, as nearby apartment dwellers who pound his walls and leave notes on his door regarding his evening sexual activities (Léto makes little noise, but watches mostly gay porno clips on his computer without earphones). And as he goes out each morning he runs into an entire gang of nearby thugs, who director Sarah Al Atassi (she plays one of them) has presented as almost stereotypical human monsters whose major phobia apparently is homosexuality. His covered motorcycle has been graffitied in yellow, describing him as a PD or faggot.

     There seems no possible way out of this horrific world until one day, traveling back and forth to work, Léto encounters—not entirely by accident since he has found his billfold in the movie house—an attractive and mysterious seeming Syrian man, Hamza (Issa Al Issa), who works at the local ice-skating ring. Both are immediately attracted to one another, Léto to Hamza’s look of masculinity, and Hamza to Léto’s petite 20-some year-old body. Almost as if he were prophesying from a magical book of foretellings, Hamza tells his new acquaintance that the ice-skating rink is closed, but promises that Léto will return the next day.

      Leaving his house, Léto again runs across the gang of thugs, but this time when they call him a faggot, he challenges the speaker, successfully challenging his attack by grabbing and wringing his balls. But the others soon join in the vicious fray and Léto is severely beaten.

      We don’t know, in fact, if this is the following day, but he has returned to the rink, now open, joining up and renting a pair of ice skates. As he has relayed in a cellphone message to his best, perhaps only friend (Philippe Bilheur), that he has met someone, and the night before he has even dreamed of having sex with the hirsute beauty. On the ice is a practicing amateur hockey team and trained ice dancers, whereas the striking young man has clearly never before worn a pair of skates. Like his neighbors, the others all scorn Léto, but when, in the men’s room, he again comes across Hamza, the Syrian is overjoyed to see him, recognizing that there is “something different” about his new friend.

     The very next moment, however, Hamza is called to clear away a mess left by the skaters, reminding us of a previous scene between Léto and his monstrous manager, who describes cinema as shit.

   In this fable-like story, Al Atassi has, indeed, represented both Léto and Hamza as two strange beauties in a world of extreme ugliness.

    Having left the rink disappointed, Léto is now on the roof of his concrete building, peering below, the thugs having gathered below imagining that the “queer” is about to jump.

    Hamza, perhaps also frustrated for having to leave his new friend so suddenly or maybe just because he is gifted with a seventh sense, seems impatient to reconnect with Léto. When the manager calls him to clean up another mess, this time he jumps the wall and rushes off to the young gay man, having heard his address when he registered to skate.

     Having observed the thugs cruel insinuations below, he rushes to the roof, only to find Léto staring at a world in which he doesn’t feel part of, but not at all ready to jump. The two come together, but Léto warns him, he is not like other gay men, dropping his pants to reveal that his specialness arises from his being a transsexual.

     Hamza seems completely unfazed, as if he has known all along that this was the boy’s “difference.” This being a fabulous fairy tale of an entire culture, he kisses Léto, the two having found, as in the Arabian Nights, true love.

       The plot I just related, however, can’t compare with the quiet wonderment of the alien land in which Al Atassi has dropped her central characters. If the concrete apartments, deteriorating cinema house, and crowded skating rink seem a bit foreboding, the characters with which she has peopled them with what seem to be almost like the giants, dwarves, hags, and trolls right out of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, with same-sex lovers Léto and Hamza standing in for Brünnhilde and Siegfried.

 

Los Angeles, July 15, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).

Harry Victor | Lycanthrophobia / 1998

the monsters of a local bar

by Douglas Messerli

 

Matt Pelfrey (screenplay), Harry Victor (director) Lycanthrophobia / 1998

 

Ted (Mitchell Welch) enters a seedy bar just for a gin & tonic where is suddenly waylaid by a man, Jack (Kevin Hunt), half talking to himself and half to anyone who might listen about all sorts of things that point to clear paranoia.

      He begins by seeming disturbed by the fact that people keep secrets inside, that an old friend with whom he used to play “hoops” turned out to be “fag.” All this time, he argues, he it hid from me, and now he’s got one of them “new lifestyles.” Obviously, Jack is more than a little homophobic, as he also stares off in the near distance where two men playing pool appear in their movements and gestures with regard to one another suggest that they may be gay.

     After attempting to find out why Ted as a patch over his right eye, what was the “accident” that made him lose his sight, he’s frustrated by the fact that Ted has no interest in sharing and attempts to walk away from him.

     Yet Jack follows him to the new table Ted has selected as he quickly begins to reveal his true phobia, lycanthrophobia: the fear of becoming a werewolf.

     He tells the story that one night he had a dream that he was a predatory animal running on all fours in the dark, and then suddenly woke up—in a stranger’s house curled up on the floor completely nude. “I was so afraid I was going to find someone’s mutilated body, I just ran out of there.”

      Jack seems to think that werewolves, one which he may secretly be, hide their fur on the inside of their skin. And to rectify his fear of becoming such a beast, he now is on lookout for signs of werewolves who appear as normal men, ready to shoot them with silver bullets. He carries his gun with him.

      Moreover, the two men we have seen in the background, possibly homosexuals, Jack tells his new “friend” are absolutely werewolves, Jack determined to shoot them soon, perhaps this very night.

      Terrified by what his uninvited guest has just told him, Ted attempts to argue that perhaps he’s mistaken, he might be misreading the signs, and on all accounts the execution Jack has planned be delayed.

       Jack is not be convinced, but in a comic moment, declares he has to take a leak, asking Ted to keep an eye on the monsters while he visits the bathroom.

       The very moment Jack gets up and leaves, the two men previously playing pool, Frank and Bruce, move into Ted’s booth surrounding him on both sides, threatening him for his friendship with Jack. Jack, it appears, has been staring at them for some time, following them, checking them out, and they are certain that he is gay, something these two homies cannot abide.

        Evidently devoted homophobes, Frank (Jay Lacopo) and Bruce (Brian Fritzpatrick) now threaten Ted, who they insist must also be gay, worthy of a good old-fashioned bashing after they rid the world of his bathroom-going “friend.”

       Again, Ted tries to reason with these new monsters, insisting that Jack is not a friend, that he has just come into the bar to get a drink, and that, in fact, he is straight. All to avail. Frank rises and heads to the bathroom while the other keeps tabs on Ted. Bruce, speaking the usual hetero hate speech suggests that fags are good at giving head so that before he knocks Ted’s teeth in perhaps he should see what he’s got.

      In the bathroom, Jack challenges the new visitor to the john, who is ready to beat up Jack until his intended foe turns with a knife in hand, throwing Frank to the floor and plunging the knife into his chest while letting out a monstrous howl. Distressed by the sounds, Bruce lets go of his chokehold of Ted’s neck, and gets up to check out what’s going on, Ted rising to shout out in words reminiscent of Jack’s: “You think you know what’s inside. You have no idea what’s inside. ...Go back there. It’s all over the floor back there. It’s something we all in common. You believe in monsters?” Bruce wrestles him back to the booth to tell him he doesn’t care what he has inside, as he stands to face the other monster in the room.

      At that very moment Jack appears leaving the toilet facing off with Bruce. Ted rises, the room spinning with suddenly no one in the place and he moves toward the door to escape. We hear a single shot, surely one of Jack’s silver bullets put through the heart of Bruce.

      The film is, quite obviously, a statement about all our “phobias,” as the words appear on the screen: “...phobia is a learned behavior.”

       This is a cheaply made short, with hardly any cinematic production values except for its creepy, horror-tale like music by Nick Pierone. And its stated thematic, although laudable, is hardly subtly expressed or even fully established since all the bar’s patrons seem to have come in from some unproducible absurd episode from Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. What is interesting is its connection of homophobia, a curable disease, with the werewolf myth, which from its earliest roots in the 1941 film The Wolfman, according to film critic Harry M. Benshoff, writing in his Homosexuality and the Horror Film, saw the condition of man turned into a predatory beast—certainly a condition that might easily apply to womanizing heterosexual men, but which in the 1950s increasingly came increasingly to be applied to gay men who were even more dangerous given their seemingly predatory behavior because it was hidden away from the public—unlike the situation of the vampire or the human-created monster Frankenstein, “is a disease of the mind [that] can be cured.” And in this sense one must argue that Harry Victor’s Lycanthrophobia

is most definitely an “educational” gay film, one that even in its credits breaks down and repurposes even its title—

                                              Lycanthrophobia

                                             “phobia can b a ly”

—to relay its educative message.

      What also may be of interest is that the innocent-seeming Ted, who stumbles into the nest of sleeping monsters may be, in fact, the reason their sudden coming to life. The one-eyed man seems to attract all three, the dormant werewolf and the two homophobes. Somewhat like an unintentional Homeric Cyclopes, Ted, whose girlfriend has gone away at least for the weekend, lives apart and away from restrictions (at least momentarily), and like Homer’s one-eyed giants ends up, passively in this case, slaughtering and eating the strangers who have wondered into his private domain. By film’s end there is obviously no one left at the bar, filled when he entered. Surely when he staggers out the exit at film’s end, he is not the same polite listener he was at the beginning of the film, willing to hear out each man’s private tale without attempting to truly correct their phobic fears. After all, even we (or at least I, perceiving this film as a pretending guiding voice) have misread the signs, unintentionally misperceiving—with the director’s encouragement—the characters to be the exact opposite of what they are. But then homophobes are often deeply closeted gay men.

     In short, if you can ignore the raw quality of this homemade-like short film, it is well worth watching.

 

Los Angeles, November 21, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2021).

 

John Huckert | Hard / 1998

force of hate

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Huckert and John Matkowsky (screenplay), John Huckert (director) Hard / 1998

 

Calling to mind such previous cop films such as William Friedkin’s 1980 film Cruising and David Fincher’s 1995 Seven, John Huckert’s Hard concerns a gay serial killer who specializes in young boy hitchhikers and hustlers. The killer, a handsome, rugged man who might attract most young gay boys searching for a kind of father figure, Jack (Malcolm Moorman), as Los Angeles Times reviewer Kevin Thomas describes him:

 

“…is a gay man’s nightmare. Rugged and handsome, he’s physically a fantasy figure come to life, but he’s also possessed of a psychopath’s fearlessness. When he comes on to a man in a bar in his insinuating yet forceful way, he has little reason to expect much resistance. Jack is an insatiable seducer but is in the grip of such intense internalized homophobia that he feels compelled to kill his lovers; in this way he has much in common with Jeffrey Dahmer as an attractive yet lethally self-hating gay man.”

 

    But gay self-hatred is not limited in this film simply to the villain. Young police detective Raymond Vates (Noel Palomaria), just awarded his badge, is also gay, but is terrified in revealing his sexuality to his fellow detectives, and with good reason. His fellow officers, Hendrickson (Steve Andrews), Jackson (K. D. Jones), Dhyun (Ken Narasaki), and Dominguez (Steve Gonzales) seem obsessed with homophobic slurs, checking out each other’s asses, playing out games of swish behavior, and in general describing to themselves how they believe a queer man thinks and behaves.

     Even worse are men like the morgue technician who when he substantiates that a male body had engaged in anal sex is only too happy to describe them as a “condition corrected,” the police as well arguing that the killer is only helping them clear the streets of their kind. Late in the film, even the murderer poses the question to Raymond, how do you think I’ve gotten away in killing and torturing all these boys? The police just look the other way.

     Moreover, Raymond has just only recently left his own wife and son, coming out after what can only have been his own deep personal doubts and suffering. He finds it almost as difficult to kiss another man as does Jack. And although he’s found a loyal, willing, and truly loving friend in the gay bartender Doug (Aaron Zaffron), Raymond prefers to go home with rugged construction workers such as the man he first picks up in the film who turns out to really be a San Diego cop, himself an expert at spotting others trying to hide their true avocations and inclinations. As Doug asks him, what’s harder for you, trying to keep the cops from knowing you’re gay or hiding the fact from the gays that you’re a cop? After the cop who’s just had good sex with him tries to kiss him, only to have Raymond turn away, he provides the rookie with some good advice. “I was afraid to when I first came out. Sex is a wonderful fantasy, but it’s the kiss that makes it real.”

     Sex is not such a wonderful fantasy, however, for those who encounter Jack. Even as Raymond and the oldest and most respected detective in their midst, Tom Ellis (Charles Lanyer) who’s been assigned as Raymond’s partner, check out Jack’s first Los Angeles victim—we’ve already seen him rape and probably kill a poor teen hitchhiker in the desert—already, as the Los Angeles Times critic puts it, “His gaze rests upon Palomaria’s character Raymond, a rookie homicide detective. Later on, at a gay bar, when Jack recognizes Raymond as one of the cops at the crime scene, he comes on to the policeman.”

     Raymond and Ellis are at this particular bar just to ask if anyone’s seen the boy in the picture, the most recent of Jack’s victims. Jack denies having seen him, but pretends that he might have some knowledge of the area, encouraging Raymond to leave his name and number. The detective gets a late-night call to meet him in the bar, only to be told that Jack has brought him out in the night under false pretensions. Arguing that he knows Raymond must be gay, he proclaims his sexual interest in him, Raymond trying out his best performance of denial. But with a sociopath like Jack, it doesn’t work. As critic Michael D. Klemm, writing in Outcome nicely summarizes the scene:

 

“Jack intuits that Ramon is secretly gay. Like two dogs trying to establish who is the alpha male, the two men enact an elaborate mating dance with Jack calling Ramon a ‘homophobic gay cop’ and Ramon trying, quite violently, to deny the mutual attraction. Inevitably, he takes Jack home. Their intense sex resembles a wrestling match as both demonstrate dominance. Then, to his horror, Ramon wakes to find himself handcuffed and tied to his bed.”

      Forced to call in sick and turning again to Doug for help, he demands, in what almost seems to be an insider’s camp film reference, “I need you to come over and bust my door in” (in To Kill a Mockingbird, if you recall, Mayella Ewell calls in the black man Tom Robinson to “bust up my chifforobe.”). Doug complies, but is almost arrested by Ellis, who has come to personally check on Raymond after his strange phone call.

     Even worse than discovering his partner is gay and has been subject to some S&M fiend, they discover that Jack is the murderer himself when they find Raymond’s detective badge in another young victim’s mouth. Jack has now totally involved Raymond in his crimes and intends to engage him personally in a battle of homosexual opposites, perhaps in an odd self-hating homophobic slur, an attempt to show others that Raymond is not so very different from him. In order to save himself from a murder charge, the rookie detective is forced to admit what really happened and come totally out of the closet.

       Certainly, the other cops are ready to believe the worst about their cohort, now all except Ellis and the Captain (Bob Hollander) turning against Raymond, not only verbally abusing him in the morning shower and shaving session, but physically beating him, the police Captain looking on without being able, so he justifies it to himself, to interfere. Once more Raymond has only his loyal friend Doug to help him salve his wounds.

       Jack has already completely involved another figure—a bisexual married man, Andy (Michael Waite)—picking him up in a bar for sex and bringing him home to stay on as a friend, exposing his own pre-pubescent son, his wife, and himself to the whims of the sociopath.

       Because of his open acceptance and strange love towards him, Jack basically spares Andy—if you can describe raping his son and arranging for his wife to return at the moment when Jack is fucking him, assuring that his marriage is destroyed, as representing a kind of lenience. But then compared with the chambers of horror Jack has created for street boys in an old theater basement under the Fletcher Street Bridge, his treatment of Andy and his family is absolutely beneficent.

      He finally takes Andy himself down into the dark chambers, attempting to get him involved in the slow stabbing and wounding of the victims that he inflicts; but when Andy refuses, he lets him go, as well, eventually, as the boy he was hoping Andy would help him further torture. By this time, we perceive, its Raymond he really wants to visit the chamber.

      Finding the released boy, and through him Jack’s hideout, Ellis refuses to let Raymond go after him, taking on the job himself. But when he doesn’t return, Raymond is forced to enter that hell. Jack has knocked out Raymond and dangles another boy before the detective, threatening to drop him to his death if Raymond doesn’t join him in his games. He drops the boy even before Raymond can try the gun he has given him, its cartridge empty. What follows is Jack’s long justification for his actions, his argument that he is saving these boys from the suffering and torture which has gone to make up the beast he has become. Unwanted at home, most often because of their sexuality, hated by most of society, their welfare ignored by the cops, these boys will only suffer, he proclaims, and in killing them early, he is saving them from that future.

      Frankly, in a film which up to this point has been filled with tough and believable language, Jack’s statements and Raymond’s almost meek-sounding arguments against his horrifyingly cynical view of life are almost trite and quite stagey. Only Jack’s belief that none of his police cronies, called to the site, will show up, seems plausible. When finally a single female police officer arrives, ironically, Jack’s bluff is over. He puts a rifle to his own head and releases the trigger, becoming the same kind visual horror into which he has turned so many others throughout the film.

    The most moving part of this otherwise excellent movie, are its final scenes, as Ellis returns Raymond his badge, the detective pondering leaving the police force forever. He asks: “Hey Lucky (Ellis’ nickname), where do you think all the hate comes from?” Lucky turns back as he is about to leave, answering, “I don’t ask myself that question anymore.” A few seconds later Raymond (real name Ramon) bursts in tears over all the hate he has witnessed in past few weeks. Raymond, it appears, has finally turned into a human who needs to ask that question and forgive even himself. And perhaps he can now express his true thanks to Doug for having helped him through the most outrageous events of his life. But we do hope he will remain a detective if only to help counter all that hate he perceives.

       One of the last scenes of the film, repeats the very first scene, as we observe a young soldier boy, who looks somewhat like the Ramon before he became a Raymond, heading out of the city, being picked up by a man who looks not so very different from Jack. I find that scene a little hokey, but perhaps we need reminding that those who destroy and hate are always there and never cease in their terrible actions against the civilized human race.

       Hard is not a great movie, but is most certainly a powerful and moving film worth far more attention than it has received. The movie is now hard to find (my viewing copy was a Netflix oldie, a mailer that will soon be put out of commission), with many of its sexual scenes having been sanitized and even a scene in which Raymond is seen removing a condom cut. Klemm asks the inevitable question: “So... full frontal male nudity during torture is okay, but not during a scene that promotes safe sex? Tell me what's wrong with this picture.”

 

Los Angeles, June 11, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).