tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7188682230427860654.post5497222772318322807..comments2023-06-17T09:29:25.717-04:00Comments on ECSTATIC: INSTANT 3: Closeted ThemesJ. Hedrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13528780351297581593noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7188682230427860654.post-25235828973911477142011-09-04T19:51:02.345-04:002011-09-04T19:51:02.345-04:00As always, you make some great recommendations, Na...As always, you make some great recommendations, Nathaniel. Thanks for turning me on to such great pics over the years, including "The Slaughter Rule," which might have passed under my radar otherwise.J. Hedrickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13528780351297581593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7188682230427860654.post-88011507145492665362011-09-04T19:40:16.790-04:002011-09-04T19:40:16.790-04:00Excellent blog and excellent series of posts! I wo...Excellent blog and excellent series of posts! I would certainly agree with your selections here. The ones I would add at the moment are ones I just recently rewatched: Everett Lewis' The Natural History of Parking Lots and Zalman King's In God's Hands. Parking Lots was the directorial debut for Lewis, who has gone on to make a number of acclaimed independent films with specifically gay characters and themes. One of the things I love about his debut though is that it is not really "a gay film" at all. When I interviewed him years back he mentioned to me that it was received as such and that surprised him since that was not how he had conceived it at all. And yet it is perfectly understandable as the intimacy between the two brothers at center demonstrates the kind of intimacy between men that we rarely if ever get to see outside the strict province of gay cinema (i.e. most specifically here I'm talking about emotional vulnerability, that kind of exposure). It's not on DVD though to the best of my knowledge and an old VHS had to suffice. Lewis' later unreleased An Ambush of Ghosts goes even further bringing in an odd confluence of desperate need and psychopathology.<br /><br /><br /><br />In God's Hands is a surfing pic from a director normally known for his soft core hetero romantic melodramas. I like those and think they are doing a lot more than they are given credit for but in this case the subject matter would seem shorn of any potential for the strictly erotic. That may be but what King has done is shift gears to emphasize the nature of the sensuous and the way that can bond people involved in the kind of communal activity in which that sensation, sensory experience as such, is predominant. Also, it's a remarkably and deceptively subtle film in which the deep bonds between the men as friends, the intimate sort of access into themselves and their fears and their hopes, shapes the others who respond to them and are willing to be so affected. It's a piece very attuned to and respectful of the undercurrents that make us who we are.<br /><br /><br /><br />When speaking about these issues I think there should also be special note made of films like those of Julian Hernandez which take emotional/sexual intimacy profoundly seriously (more so than a lot of gay cinema or cinema in general that traffics blithely in these issues). So much so that that intimacy becomes the ostensible subject of his films and motivator for their glorious aesthetic power. <br /><br /><br /><br />On a slightly different note I feel compelled to mention something else here that might be a very worthwhile complement to any discussion about the ways in which physical and sexual intimacy can get folded into intellectual intimacy. A rare example of this possibility is my favorite Nicolas Roeg picture, Full Body Massage (there are other, technically better Roeg pictures but this is my favorite for many reasons). The whole film takes place over the course of an extended massage session, along with numerous Roeg trademark style flashbacks and cutaways. What compels here is the extraordinary way in which Roeg and his actors (there are really only the two principles) and his screenwriter craft a detailed, subtle and ever developing rhythmic dialogue of rich subjects in which we are meant to understand that this level of intimacy is exactly the same as that of the intensely physical or sexual. The spectrum of possibilities (sexual/purely physical and sensual/ intellectual/ spiritual) is shown to be that of complementary colors in a continuum, none taken to be excessively dominant or baseline indisposable. In this I think Roeg actually gets very close to demonstrating an ideal relationship and, importantly, not one shorn of friction or confrontational elements.nathaniel drake carlsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12770228082154418103noreply@blogger.com