Sunday, March 25, 2012
TWO SIDES TO EVERY QUESTION
Today's gay film was John Schesinger's
with Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson and Murray Head. A triangle. And not in the usual way. Here it is guy guy and guy girl.
I saw this before I came out in 1975 so for me it was a very personal experience. Somehow the idea registered that I could be a kind of Murray Head figure, bisexual and playing both sides. Of course if you really pay attention to the film, even Murray Head doesn't manage to do it. Finch plays a purely gay physician and Jackson is very hetero. So, one sees what one wants to see.
In actual fact there are differing views on what is going on in this film and I see it as a kind of end of the empire film with a firm position about love and its variations requiring work to keep it alive. No one is doing that here.
We do have on offer a family friendly to all parties, unknown to them, who are in fact doing the work with two men and one woman and kids. We don't see this explicitly but it is very clear inferentially and that is point. No one is explaining or complaining. We even see that the wife is white and one man is black and there are no brown kids. Man on man.
The family is eccentrically off center. A living social experiment.
I make a lot of this because of my situation precisely then but Ebert sees it quite a different way and you should read his review.
The film is thoroughly enjoyable in any case. There is a beautiful bar mitzvah and other little side trips. A run through of old style telephone technology. Very good. Well composed. You do have to think and react.
It is surely a classic film of our times and I will give it a 5 out of Netflix5.
Murray Head is a babe.
