Illustration by Michael DiMilo
A Man in Need : Film Review of Queer
★★★1/2
By Geoff Carter
William S. Burroughs was one of the giants of the Beat Generation, helping to define the disaffection of an entire generation. This alienation was reflected in his body of literary work as well as the recent film adaptation of one of his early novellas, Queer, adapted by Justin Kuritzkes and directed by Luca Guadagnino.
In Burrough’s semi-autobiographical narrative, William Lee (Daniel Craig) busily haunts the streets of Mexico City, always on the hunt for sex, love, and human connection—usually in that order. He picks up men in bars, hires prostitutes, and relentlessly airs his views (in a charming Southern accent) on everything from guns to politics to homosexuality. He drinks heavily and constantly, a dissolute creature constantly on the hunt for that most elusive quarry: a genuine human connection.
His life seems to consist of little more than these aimless wanderings, incessant drinking, and empty conversation until he meets Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a veteran who is also an expatriate. Lee is smitten with Allerton and pursues him constantly. Allerton maintains his distance from the older and increasingly desperate Lee, but he does allow himself to become seduced by the older man. He commits nothing to Lee, sometimes leaving his company to hang out with Mary (Andran Ursuta), a female friend. At one point, a very drunk Lee crashes a party to pursue Allerton but only ends up embarrassing himself.
Finally, fearful of losing his love, Lee entices Allerton with an all-expenses paid trip with him to South America in his quest to find yage, an hallucinogenic plant rumored to bestow telepathic powers on those who use it. Allerton refuses at first, but then finally accedes to Lee and they leave on their—or rather Lee’s—quest which eventually takes them deep into the jungle where they find the elusive, and very eccentric, Dr. Cotter (Lesley Manville), a researcher embedded in the wilds of the jungle.
At their request, she and her husband (Lisandro Alonso) brew up a batch of ayahuasca tea from yage and give it to Lee and Allerton. The two men feel no effects until they hallucinate that they are coughing up bubbles of blood containing their hearts. The film then enters into a surrealistic realm where the men find themselves disappearing into thin air and then, during a love-making sequence, find their hands disappearing into each other’s bodies as the two of them merge, separate, and remerge.
Allerton and Lee leave and Lee eventually returns alone to Mexico. There, he continues his dissolute lifestyle, meeting up with his friend Joe and the other denizens of the Mexico City gay scene. He asks about Allerton. Joe tells him his former lover went back down into the jungle with a colonel.
Lee has a vision of a giant version of himself peering into a hotel where he sees himself and Allerton and finds himself playing a game of William Tell. Years later, as an aged man, he has a vision of Allerton lying beside him in bed.
Queer is one of those film where time seems suspended. Lee’s excursions into various hotel rooms and his favorite bars seem as if they’re happening at any time—repeatedly, like a never-ending Moebius loop. The unreality of Lee’s lifestyle is emphasized by Guadagnino’s use of sound sets. Lee’s world never looks quite real; it seems condensed and claustrophobic. The colors are muted and washed out. The windows in nearly every building are streaked and cloudy, filtering any light. Compared to one of Guadagnino’s previous film, Call Me By Your Name, which bursts with color, Queer is strangely muted.
In some of the scenes, a shadow image of Lee’s arm separates from the film and—in one case—caresses Allerton. These shadows are echoes of Lee’s desire, and his desire to find telepathic powers is conflated—at least in his mind—with his desire for his young lover. This lack of true light, of color, symbolizes his inability—and frustration—at gaining any true human connection.
Queer would not have been possible without the extraordinary performance of Daniel Craig as Lee. He is in turns charming, pathetic, disgusting, sophisticated, naïve, and noble. As a middle-aged alcoholic and drug addict desperate to find and maintain not only a physical or emotional, but a cosmic love, Craig captures the essence of a man who knows he is seeking a version of the impossible. In one scene where he has taken the financially strapped Allerton to dinner, he launches into a non-stop monologue about queerness during which the young man doesn’t say a word. He merely continues to eat non-stop while Lee pours his heart out. It is a remarkably sad scene emphasized by Allerton’s passive-aggressive response to Lee’s advances. He maintains he might take a male lover, but that he is not “queer”. In other words, he is saying—and his demeanor demonstrates this—he is better than Lee.
Queer is a film that seems deceptively simple. It is a straightforward love story but is much more than that. It resonates with Lee’s impossible quest for objects of the heart and union of the souls. It is a film that will (like Lee’s Allerton) stay with you for a time.
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