Was that the implication?
Died young at 61...does anyone know how/what etc?
That was my impression... my gaydar was going off about 5 mins in :P
shareHe did say he loved the guy.
share"Gaydar" made me laugh out loud. What it necessary to present this TMI? I handled it fine in Brideshead (the original), but in this film it seemed gratuitous. Tennant is a fine actor, but his facial expression while he was chasing the train on his bicycle was bizarre. :P indeed.
shareAs I've said elsewhere - on the "Hot Fuzz" board, bizarrely enough - take sex out of the equation and love is just love... Maybe he was sexually attracted to the bloke. But, there's no reason he couldn't have had a profound, but non-sexual love for the bloke... Anyway, whichever it was, it was a lovely, thoughtful performance by David T.
shareIn one of the interviews David Tennant gave over the last couple of days, he did mention homosexuality in relation to Eddington, but I don't remember which interview
If it wasn't love in that sense, then why was Eddington so reluctant to mention it?
sharePeople jump to conclusions... He was already skating on thin ice by being a conscientious objector.
shareI just think the BBC was making a little gay subtext to make the drama more
interesting. In any case I thought it was a brilliant drama.
The best films are made in an intelligent format.
I remember David Tennant mentioning this some where..
found it..
from david-tennant.com
"In some ways he is a great, forgotten man, which is why this is an intriguing story to tell. There is one biography which I found and that was very helpful, although there are elements of his private life which are skirted around.
"The story we tell is of a man who couldn't quite face the fact that he was gay."
Evidently he was gay and the mention of this is not at all gratuitous in the film. This dynamic in the context of bucking the prevailing sentiment shows his vulnerable position in defying the anti-German prejudice. The scene where Jim Broadbent's character (Sir Oliver Lodge) bitterly mentions his son's death is poignant as Eddington too has lost a loved one - but cannot respond due to the gay nature of the love.
shareSo, that sounds to me like they just made it up.
In a film about two scientists dedicated to the truth, that's a shame.
maybe that was because Homosexuality was illegal in 1914
sharePlus, to compound the issue, it surely conflicted with his faith.
shareIt seems that Quakerism is one of the more accepting Christian denominations when it comes to same-sex relationships. But, gay Christians struggle even these days. So, back then - when the subject of homosexuality was more or less completely taboo - it must have been very difficult.
share..Looks like the Doctor's been hanging around Captain Jack Harkness a bit too much....whoda thunk he'd end up a poofter?
shareI don't know, but I wouldn't have dropped a bar of accreted particles in the radiation shower when he was around...
shareAhahahahaha... ahh. I lol'd. Man I can't remember the last time I heard a good physics joke.
shareEddington was gay, in fact he struggled to deal with the fact that he was gay. He couldn't say anything because homosexuality was illegal right up until the late 70's/early 80's.
What i would wish to know is did Eddington ever have a wife (which was common with gay men at the time) or take any lovers?
Wait: You don't know if took any lovers, but you can assert unequivocally that he was gay? How does *that* work?
shareI agree with you, webgeekstress: there is (apparently) no direct evidence that Arthur Eddington was homosexual. All of Eddington's personal papers were destroyed and the fact (or not) of his homosexuality must remain an inference.
However, such evidence as exists suggests a reasonably strong likelihood that he was homosexual: he never married and apparently had no interest in women except as acquaintances, whereas he did form strong emotional connections with men; for example, the Cambridge scholar Arthur I. Miller mentions a strong emotional relationship with a fellow named Charles Trimble. As I say, though, there is no available evidence that suggests he had physical relationships with men (and, as others have mentioned, such behavior would have been extremely risky at the time).
I looked at it as a story of a really good, true friendship. I don't necessarily think that Eddington feelings towards William were of homosexual nature, whether or not Eddington himself was gay.
Why is it that nowadays people just can't (publicly, at least) conceive of love for a friend? Don't you pleople have at least one good friend whom you love?
Of course most of us can conceive of love for a friend. But unless we're talking about the "love that dare not speak its name", I don't think we'd be ashamed to own it openly, which was Eddington's problem.
shareOrrrr... It wasn't really commonplace for men to have bosom buddies back then. Like a BFF who you tell everything too and would give the world for. It still isn't really. For some reason two guys being super close is automatically considered homosexual, whereas if two girls hold hands skipping down the street and whispering secrets in each other's ears at sleepovers all is fine. It all has to do with perspective.
Correctomundo, a word I have never used before, and hopefully never will again.
MR%P T7 U~O
You know, I took it as Eddington just loved William as a brother. Like a best friend. I don't think that he felt sexually attracted to him.
"We're exactly one zat gun short of actually having a zat gun." -Jack O'Neill
Not only did he say he loved his male friend, and that it turned out to be the one statement he couldn't tell anyone (his sister said, "You can tell me"), but he looked shocked when Sir Oliver said that there could be a Mrs. Eddington some day.
So would any straight guy who wasn't dating at the time and heard his new boss speculating about a future bride. Really: it takes some nerve for people to say things like that to someone else, and I'd never tolerate anybody speculating aloud about *my* marital status as if they had any say about it -- because they DON'T. I've had to make that point about butting out of my business more than once to now ex-in-laws re: having or not having children: I don't care what they wanted. It wasn't up to them, and they weren't entitled to any say whatsoever. So I'm not surprised that the character of Eddington would be shocked to hear a man who didn't know him well talking about his marital status, let alone any expected change in it.
But then again, perhaps you have a much looser sense of privacy and wouldn't be shocked by your boss sticking his nose into your personal business ...
In this respect, the story the film told had nothing to do with the truth ... which is that if Eddington had a sexual preference (that is, if he wasn't just a satisfied bachelor, as some men apparently are), it remains UNKNOWN. Moreover, determined bachelorhood was a well-known phenomenon during the Victorian era; most men who chose bachelorhood were not homosexual, regardless that now, when considering that era through a 21st-century perspective, we question the single state of every unmarried man (that this is today's default assumption is the conceit of **our** era). Any hint as to homosexuality in this film is solely speculation by the director and screenwriter -- it has no basis in historical fact. This rumor isn't yet as popular as the one that Mileva Maric, Einstein's first wife, contributed significantly to *his* work on relativity, but it's just as false. Sometimes, truth is just inconvenient, not PC, no matter how much people wish it were otherwise: Maric didn't help out on Einstein's theories, and Eddington wasn't gay. The only thing that is known and documented about Eddington is that he remained a bachelor and a scientist devoted to his work. So give up, folks; you don't get to add him to the gay pantheon, only to the list of men that gays wish they could claim.
share