Florida Agenda

By Warren Day

You might think 2005 was the best gay year in movies based purely on the release of “Brokeback Mountain.” But in terms of sheer quantity, 2011 has all other years beat, and the quality was damn good too.

I’m not talking about the small, independent films that you usually see only in GLBT  film festivals, but mainstream movies with one or more recognizable stars, the kind of gay-themed movies that escape the distribution ghetto to which most are assigned, and which your liberal-leaning relatives might see. And in addition, they are showing up on Best-of-the-Year lists. The celluloid closet is finally bursting open.

In June, it all began with “Beginners,” where Ewan McGregor plays an uptight straight son who learns how to take risks with his heart from his gay father, who comes out of the closet at age 75 and forms a better relationship with a thirty-something man than anything the son has ever experienced.  The unsurpassable Christopher Plummer is the father and he’s currently the front-runner to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and the film itself is appearing on some ten best lists from straight movie critics (yes, there are some).

If “Beginners” portrays the liberating normalcy of coming out of the closet at any age, then Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” shows the soul-crunching consequences of dwelling there your whole life.  Leonardo DiCaprio plays J. Edgar Hoover, the founder and longest-serving head of the FBI, while Arnie Hammer plays his never-left-his-side assistant Clyde Tolson. If Mr.

Tolson had been as good-looking as Mr. Hammer (he wasn’t), then it’s doubtful Mr. Hoover could have excised as much self-control as he did.  Straight audiences didn’t warm up to this almost tabloid version of a right-wing hero, but gays resonated with this unresolved relationship and found  meanings in the film that may have escaped others.

If “J. Edgar” dealt with one of the biggest bromances in American history, our next film lays out the biggest one in world literature, namely that between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.  In “Game of Shadows,” with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as the original dynamic duo, the script and the director (Madonna’s ex-husband) make the homoerotic nature of their relationship blatantly obvious.  Holmes looks like a heartsick puppy as he watches Watson marry, and then on their honeymoon night Holmes kidnaps Watson, throws the brand new Mrs. Watson into a river, and does all of this while dressed in drag.  Subtle it ain’t.

In “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” taken from the novel that’s been a world-wide phenomenon, the bi-sexuality of Lisbeth Salander is more subtle than it was in the Swedish film version. The first time Daniel Craig meets Rooney Mara, she’s in bed with a woman, but then she’s portrayed as more heterosexual for the rest of the movie. Directed by David Fincher, who did “The Social Network,” the film is grittier and has more resonance than the fine Swedish version.

Just the opposite happens in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” where the homosexuality of at least three characters receives more play than it did in the internationally-acclaimed TV mini-series. Rightly one of the best films of the year, and one of the best thinking-person’s spy thrillers ever made, Gary Oldman achieves a career high, with excellent support from Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch and John Hurt.  Like “Beginners,” the homosexuality or bisexuality of those three characters is treated with the same nonchalance as if they’d been straight, and that’s definitely a sign of cinema progress. For a good deal of this film, you may feel you don’t know what’s going on, but the director is merely letting you know how real espionage feels, where the whole nature of the enterprise is deception and confusion.

Benedict Cumberbatch

The British film “Weekend” escaped the attention black hole that most independent gay films find themselves in, and is appearing on some best of the year lists. Telling the story of how a relationship-inclined gay man and a very much non-relationship type gay man meet on a Friday and developed a strong bond over the weekend.  On some level, this is a rather run-of-the-mill story for gay films, so it was interesting that it received so many positive reviews from straight critics.

“Pariah,” which is still opening in theaters, is in some ways the gay version of last year’s “Precious,” as it traces the struggle of a Brooklyn 17-year-old African-American girl to come to terms with her sexuality and deal with her strait-lace mother.  Played by Adepero Oduye in a heartbreaking performance, she finds herself attracted to a girl even more closeted than she is.  The film succeeds in telling a particular story in a universal way, thus enabling whites and blacks, straights and gays, men and women to mutually find relevance and truth in its characters.

What is really amazing about these gay-themed movies is that to some degree they’re all worth seeing, and in what other year could you say that about seven movies with gay content?

And now we come to what may be the campiest moment in any film released in 2011, but it happened in one far different from any of those discussed here. I’m talking about Tom Cruise’s latest outing in the fourth “Mission Impossible” movie, but the scene didn’t involve him, but rather his comrade-in-arms Jeremy Renner (“The Hurt Locker,” “The Town”). The sole woman in the IMF team has been sent to entice a code from a multi-millionaire industrialist, while Jeremy is plunged down a shaft and suspended by magnetic force (I defy anyone to suspend belief enough to swallow that).  And when Renner barely makes it back up the shaft exhausted and bruised, he exclaims, “The next time, I get to seduce the rich guy.” Now the question is, was this in the script or was it an ad lib?

May the year 2012 further develop these delightful, diverse, and ever-deepening trends.

Warren Day

Send comments or questions to AgendaReviews@aol.com

One thing you can look forward to after Gay Pride and Father’s Day is a film that’s an almost perfect entertainment for those two neighboring celebrations. Opening July 1st in Florida, Beginners is a true story that reverses a moment found in countless gay-themed movies.

Rather than the son coming out to his father, it’s the father, Christopher Plummer, who comes out to his straight son, Ewan McGregor. And what follows is not the usual anguish and incrimination, but a touching and revealing account of how self-acceptance is the first step for everyone when it comes to falling in love.

Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, a graphic designer who seems to be going through a mid-life crisis several years before he’s supposed to have one. He’s adrift both personally and professionally when his life is turned topsy-turvy after his mother dies and his father, Hal, announces he’s gay, has always been gay, and is now going to live the rest of his life with a flamboyant enthusiasm. “I don’t want to be theoretically gay,” Hal explains to his startled son.

Oliver has had a series of short and not-so-happy relationships, something he blames on the lifeless marriage of his parents, but then he sees his father at age 75 blossom and fall in love for the first time in his life with a 39 year-old named Andy. And with that positive example before him, Oliver finds himself increasingly involved with a French actress with an equally fickle history. Anna is played by the beautiful Mélanie Laurent, who starred in Inglorious Bastards.

The repressive Oliver often ends up expressing his true feelings to his father’s dog, a Jack Russell terrier, who comments back to the audience in succinct subtitles, thus proving what canine lovers have long suspected – dogs understand the foibles of human beings better than we do ourselves.

The central situation actually happened to the writer-director Mike Mills, and Beginners has the rhythm and resonance of something that’s been lived and not just imagined. And it also has the weakness of many an autobiographical- based movie in that it’s more moving in moments than it is as a whole. Memory is, by its nature, episodic, so the story goes back and forth in time as Oliver works his way toward a new understanding of his father and of himself.

The Vice-Versa Film of 2011

All the performances are masterful, including that Jack Russell, and one can hope that this role might earn Christopher Plummer the Oscar that has eluded him so far.

One critic complained that it wasn’t feasible for a man of 39 to fall in love with a man of 75 years, thus revealing that critic’s narrow views and narrow acquaintances. The verities and varieties of the human heart are far more mysterious and extensive than our puny categories can encompass.

And unlike the usual soap-opera that dominates so many gay-themed stories, Beginners is filled with hilarity and hopefulness as people struggle to find that precarious balance between head and heart.

The simple and sweet message of this delightful film is that when it comes to love and relationships, all of us, regardless of age or orientation, are – and always will be – beginners.

Beginners will be released in theatres nationwide July 1st. Check your local listings for theatres and movie times.