A Film A Day: LGBT

Happiest Season (2020)

I am a bit of Grinch when it comes to Christmas. While being all grumpy during the holiday season is not my vibe, I don't like the money and time wasted on decorations, I don't like people pretending to be happy when they are not, and I f***king hate Christmas songs. Hence I would have never watched Clea DuVall's Happiest Season were it not directed by a woman and praised by bloggers I follow. And it would have been a loss on my side because, while it has its flaws, it is an engaging, moving and heartbreaking film.

I was very looking forward to seeing Boy Erased as it deals with a very difficult and important subject and has many good actors —Nicole Kidman, Lucas Hedges, Joel Edgerton, who is also directing, and Russell Crowe. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a disappointment.

Based on Garrard Conley's memoir of the same name, the story follows Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges), the son of a Baptist preacher (Russell Crowe) and a religious woman (Nicole Kidman) in Arkansas. When he comes out as gay, his parents send him to a church-supported gay conversion camp to cure him of his homosexuality.

I don't know much about AIDS but I've always been interested in the subject matter as I care about LBGT causes so I finally decided to check out How to Survive a Plague, another documentary suggested by Dell over Dell on Movies as it topped his greatest LGBT movies list.

As I was mentioning, How to Survive a Plague is a documentary about AIDS and it follows two small groups of gay activists, ACT UP and TAG, as they fight the government, specifically the FDA, to get a treatment to turn a death sentence such as AIDS into a manageable disease.

Though I haven't read Becky Albertalli's Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, I was very excited about Love, Simon. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for LGBT movies or because I've heard so many good things about this film, but I just couldn't wait to see it.

The film is about Simon Spier (Nick Robinson), a teenage boy who leads a pretty normal life, apart from the fact that he is secretly gay. When an anonymous boy who goes by Blue writes on the high school Tumblr-like page that he is gay, Simon decides to email him under the name of Jacques and they eventually bond. Unfortunately, Martin (Logan Miller), a quite unpopular kid, accidentally stumbles across Simon's emails, screenshots them and uses them to blackmail Simon into helping him get Abby (Alexandra Shipp), one of Simon's friends. While trying to handle his blackmailer, Simon also attempts to discover the true identity of Blue and come to terms with his identity.

When I added Paris Is Burning to my watchlist I didn't even know it was a documentary. When I found out, I thought I'd never watch it because I didn't like documentaries. Actually, I'd barely watched one before. Then last year I went through a documentary phase and decided to watch it. And it blew my mind.

Just in case you are not into documentaries or you don't know this one, Paris Is Burning is about the gay New York of the 1980s and the ball culture which consisted of balls where contestants walk or perform in different ways. It's a story about people being marginalized for being black or Latino, male and gay.

A Fantastic Woman (Spanish: Una mujer fantástica) is the foreign language nominee I was interested in seeing the most, mainly because it was the only one I knew something about, and, even though I haven't seen Sebastián Lelio's Gloria, I had pretty high expectations for this.

The film is set in Santiago, Chile, and follows Marina (Daniela Vega), a transgender waitress who is in a relationship with an older man, Orlando (Francisco Reyes). When Orlando suddenly dies, her life becomes a nightmare. While Orlando's family attacks her, both verbally and physically, all the time and even ban her from attending the funeral. As if being harassed by Orlando's family wasn't enough, she also becomes the subject of the investigation of Orlando's death.

I haven't read André Aciman's novel of the same name, and still I was excited to see Call Me by Your Name because it's directed by an Italian filmmaker, Luca Guadagnino, and basically everyone praised it, but it was a little disappointing.

Northen Italy, Summer 1983. Seventeen-year-old Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet) is spending his days in his family's villa transcribing and playing classical music and reading. Then Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives, an American graduate who has come to help Elio's father (Michael Stuhlbarg) with archaeological research and Elio soon develops a crush on him.

Genres

Crime, Drama

Director

Sidney Lumet

Country

USA

Cast

Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, James Broderick, Lance Henriksen, Chris Sarandon, Penelope Allen, Sully Boyar, Susan Peretz, Carol Kane, Beulah Garrick, Sandra Kazan, Estelle Omens, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Amy Levitt, Gary Springer, John Marriott, Philip Charles MacKenzie

Storyline

A ten-minute bank robbery turns into a hostage situation and a media circus when Sonny (Al Pacino), one of the robbers, finds that there's nothing much to steal.

Opinion

I've been putting off Dog Day Afternoon for a very long time. It's just that the whole bank robbery storyline didn't appeal me much. Then Dell mentioned this film on his Top 20 LGBT Movies list and, curious to see how it would fit, I finally checked it out. I'm not going to tell you that because I don't want to spoil the film for you if you still haven't seen it, but it sure fits. And it's such a great film I'd put it on my Top 20 LGBT Movies list too.

Anyway, the film tells a compelling and tragic true story about a bank robbery. It does have some of the typical moments of films of this genre – the robbers getting a massive attention from the media, for example – and if you think about it, the plot is rather thing, but to benefit from that almost non-existent plot are the characters.

This film has indeed a fantastic, detailed, believable characterization, and very interesting characters, especially John Cazale’s Sal. While Al Pacino’s Sonny is the incarnation of a man who tries to keep everything under control, a man who acts tough but who’s got heart and doesn’t want anybody to get hurt – which is probably the reason why you can’t help but sympathize with him -, John Cazale’s Sal is a completely different man. Sal is the kind of man who does not need to talk to speak. His face does all the job. He is aggressive and the more dangerous of the two, but he is also kind of naïve. Unlike Sonny, he is worried about what people think about him which is crazy since he’s robbing a bank and he’s the wandering mine. I think that’s what makes the character so interesting.

These two different but equally fascinating characters are brought to life by two fantastic actors. In my opinion, Al Pacino gives his best performance ever. He doesn’t play Sonny, he is Sonny, and the best thing about it is that Sonny is different from the usual character he plays. Sure, he’s still a criminal, but he’s far away from the cold-blooded Michael Corleone or the ruthless Tony Montana. John Cazale also gives a great performance and he embodies Sal to perfection.

Then, of course, there’s the direction. Not only Lumet builds some great tension and suspense but he also gives the inside and the outside of the bank two completely different tones. It’s all calm inside and all frenetic outside. It should be the opposite given the situation, but I think that’s why it works so well.

However, Dog Day Afternoon does have a flaw. It touches many important themes such as the trauma of Vietnam War veterans, media doing everything to get a story and homosexuality, but it doesn’t explore them at most.