Pixelmatsch usually blogs the Berlinale by days, putting all the films of one day into one posting. But now that we are blogging them separately, and considering the fact that my blog posts are so much longer, I will stick to my old one-post-one-film habit. I think this is a little easier to read but of course there will be no funny movie-mixing posting titles.
Love is Strange
USA 2014, Ira Sachs, 98’
Alfred Molina and John Lithgow play an old gay couple (George and Ben) living in New York City, where one is retired and the other one lost his job after the catholic school he was working out found out that they married. Now they have to move out of their apartment, Ben moves in with his nephew and George moves in with a younger gay couple. Unfortunately Ben and his nephew’s family have a hard time adjusting to each other and George’s friends have loud parties every day.
Death count: 1.
This movie is essentially “Make way for tomorrow” in a modern, intellectual, gay setting. I was immediately reminded of the film in the way Ben and George suffer under their separation, and how they have trouble adjusting to living with other people. It was very moving to see how Ben was being a nuisance to his nephew’s family, but without really doing anything wrong at all. If anything, his nephew’s son is immensely immature in his latent homophobia and irrational emoness. Besides the obvious tear-jerkers and the beautifully crafted characters (to be honest, Marisa Tomei’s character was my favorite), another thing I really liked about the film was its blatant intellectualism. The film itself wasn’t all that intellectual, it was straight-forward and told in an unpretentious, simple way. It was fighting homophobia without the annoying activist touch. But the characters were living in a little dream world in which everybody goes to concerts and art galleries, the characters teach music or write novels and kids steal old French books from school. To be honest I loved that little dream world.
The film’s only weakness was that it was a little bit too much at times. Was it really necessary for someone to die in this movie to put its point across?
Oh, the death counts! XD I am definitely not against activist approaches to life (or cinema) in general, but I agree that it wouldn’t really have fitted here. It’s just a cute little story really, with cute little inside-stories. I am sure the director could have turned the movie into something better, if he used the material he shot and cut it in a different way (like cutting out the horrible ending for example…?).
Haha, I had hoped that you would like the death count XD
Actually I perceived the movie as a little bit activist, I mean, unlike a lot of gay movies (such as Weekend), it does have an explicit message advocating against homophobia, for example in the shape of that letter that George writes to the parents. But it was fine that way, even though I was personally more interested in the character dynamics between George and Ben and their friends.
Yeah, the ending almost ruined the film. It’s true that the film has potential to be much better, but this way it was “just” pretty good :D