I Saw WEEKEND Last Night...

...and I thought it was really good. (There. Blog post of the week over.)

My favorite parts of the film were when it touched on how strangers can leave strong, lasting marks on someone in such a short amount of time. The capacity in which someone is willing to open themselves up so quickly really speaks to me. Just a bit of wish fulfillment for someone (i.e. me) who takes months and months just to allow someone else to open themselves up to them. It's those moments that people might want to use to say, "The film isn't about gay love. It's about love in general," or something along those line. You can look at it like that, sure, but while those aspects are wonderful, they aren't key. See, this film is totally about gay love and what it means to be gay and in love in a straight-love dominated world. This is a film about the relationship between the two cultures. (To be clear, I'm not saying that there are separate types of loves, one straight and one gay. That leads to comparisons and invites unwanted implications on my part. I just mean to use those terms as a form of distinction, like saying "boy friend" and "girl friend" to mean a friend that is a boy/girl.)

WEEKEND doesn't necessarily have to make a case to say that the gay and straight cultures are at odds, whether hostile or just mildly uncomfortable, but it does make a case that they are two different worlds. There are two moments that I want to emphasize here:


1) When listening in to a graphic (and really gross) sex story from a straight co-worker, Russel seems extremely uncomfortable and out of place. One might think that it's obviously because the story being told is so disgusting, and you know, he's gay, but really there's more to it: it's the fact this guy is talking about it in public in the first place.

He brings it up when he and Glen have a conversation over lunch about Glen's art project (taping the morning after thoughts of Glen's sexual encounters. What happened, what they wanted to happen, etc).

Russell: "I'm not sure people want to hear about the random sex lives of strangers."
Glen: "Imagine if everybody was just open about what they did and then everything is just normal."
Russell: "Yeah, but people are open about it."
Glen: "Are they?"
Russell: "There's this guy at work today--I'm just sitting there having my lunch, and he starts talking about how many fingers he can put up a girl's fanny."
Glen: "Yeah, but was he gay?"
Russell: "No."
Glen: "Well there you go then...Gay people never talk about it in public unless it's just cheap innuendo."

2) When Russell asks Glen how he's going to present his art project, Glen is at a loss. He wants everyone to see it, but he knows that's not a possibility right now:

"The problem is no one's going to come and see it because it's about gay sex. So the gays will only come because they want a glimpse of a cock and they'll be disappointed. And the straights won't come because, well, it's got nothing to do with their world. They'll go and see pictures of refuges or murder or rape but gay sex...fuck off."

In both moments you see Glen's struggling with his yearning to bring both gay and straight cultures together, and the impossibility of accomplishing his desire. He wants everyone to live openly, to make everything "normal", to bring people in a constant state of "yeah, okay?" when regarding to gay or straight culture. He wants to destroy the words gay and straight and let people just be people.

And in some ways, the film is taking place of his art project. We see every bit of Glen and Russell's relationship: the get-to-know-you's, the arguments, the sex, the heartbreak. Writer/director/editor Andrew Haigh is making these every bit of their relationship public to us. It wants to make it normal. What's interesting, though, is the way he shows their relationship while they are in public themselves.

About every scene where both Glen and Russell are together in public, they are in the background. Extras constantly cross their path and cover their bodies (sometimes covering up the whole frame itself). When there aren't any extras, they are shown in extreme long shot, barely distinguishable from other people, and even sometimes, the camera is behind an object, creating a barrier between them and the audience.

The film will not tear away from the fact that these two people are outsiders to society, that they have been pushed so far to the side that they are hidden and need to be pointed out to spot. They are so foreign that the camera (in these public scenes) becomes a makeshift private detective, always following them from behind, eavesdropping on their conversation, watching their movements, studying their body language. It's easy to see it jotting notes and nodding it's head as it learns about Russell and Glen. All of this is juxtaposed to the scenes in Russell's apartment. There, the camera shares an intimate relationship with them. It's close enough to have a conversation with them. It's with them in the bathtub. It's in the bed with them as they have sex. Now, the camera (throughout the whole film) seems to be an, as Glen would say, ashamed gay person, who will act themselves in the privacy of their own home, but in public is self-conscious and possibly self-loathed, still keeping up the "outsider" status of homosexuality.

Now you can put this all together and see a small problem. If the film wants to talk about gay sexuality and love in the open, if it wants to make all of this normal in the public eye, then why is it treating it's protagonists as outsiders, as abnormal, in the realm that needs it normalization the most? If Haigh wanted to normalize his characters, he should have filmed them in a way that normalizes them in all aspects, right? There would be no private-eye camera to distance them from the audience in public scenes. So what's up?

As one of the last scene implies, maybe the world just isn't ready or mature enough for it yet. At least not now. Change takes a long time, and we're just at the beginning it seems. In this scene, Russell meets Glen at the train station for one last goodbye (a la BEFORE SUNRISE and LOST AND TRANSLATION) before they possibly never see each other again. This scene includes an emotional climax for both characters with Russell finally showing physical affection in public, and Glen struggling with a love he doesn't want. It's one of the film's most emotionally raw and honest scenes, and the moment is almost ruined by two things:

1) A woman walks into frame, notices what's going on, and quickly walks out of frame.

Her motivation for abruptly changing her course is unclear, but it does have something to do with Glen and Russell. Maybe she wanted to get away from gay men having a moment because she was grossed out. Or maybe she just wanted to give them space. It does let us know that they are being watched though. And it's hard to not feel uncomfortable at her hasty exit.

2) A man off screen gives that cheeky whistle and yells at the couple and calls them "gay boys," maybe pointing them out to his friends or something...

...and you can see the anger in Russell's eyes.

But there is another possibility for its public scenes. Maybe it's for the purpose of frustrating the audience, just as the man frustrates Russel. With all of the obstacles in the way, Haigh wants the audience to get upset. He wants them to yell at the extras to get out of the way. He wants us to turn down the volume of that damn train. He wants us to want to see what they're doing. He wants us to want to punch that man in face just like Russell probably wants to do. He wants those moments ruined. Only then will the audience realize that they are invested in the character's relationship, their emotional journeys, and the characters themselves. Only then will we understand that we are seeing them any other human being. And that's the beginning of normalization.