I'm not a gay man, either...but I strongly support gay rights and marriage equality. I have gay friends. I have a number of gay relatives as well, on both sides of my family, which is pretty large.
I just found out about this film a month ago, while attending another film at a local church. The same church showed this film last night. Their flier about Bridegroom mentioned " a relationship cut tragically short by a misstep off the side of a roof."
So I mistakenly assumed this was going to be about an older committed, middle-class or blue-collar gay male couple--who were possibly restoring a house together. And one falls off the roof while doing so. Leading to a huge legal mess after his sudden death.
Wrong. So very wrong...
That possible scenario hit very close to home--mostly because a relative of mine also lost a long-time partner in a tragic and horrible way (more about that later). So I knew I had to see this showing. It was very hard to watch, for a number of reasons.
While it was very important to see the backstory, and life histories of both Tom and Shane, I found Shane's "video diary" a bit much. Setting up a camera to watch oneself grieve and cry? Do people really DO that? A blog is one thing, but...
Maybe that's a generational thing...I'll admit to being the same age as Tom's father. I found that stuff to be a bit unsettling (I neither text nor tweet, and I don't take a lot of pix and I don't like the whole idea of "selfies"...maybe that has something to do with it).
Shane's dialogue in those videos was incoherent, of course, and it made me feel voyeuristic and more than a little uneasy, as though I was intruding on his sorrow. And it was done not once, but a number of times.
The whole idea of a "video diary" seems a bit much...who films a speedometer when you're doing 105? I know Montana allows high-speed driving...but still...
And was he intending to make a documentary about being from Montana and gay (and being bullied) all along? Why were his videos from his high school years included? It's almost like he intended to make a film at some future point. Or is he just a tad narcissistic?
They were young and in love. Very much. Okay. I get that. Been there. Done that. That was obvious from the beginning, which made the ending (and what you knew was coming) even worse.
But by far the biggest turn-off, for quite a stretch of this film, was the way they were shown to be "pretty" SoCal people...and how much they were (obviously) so affluent (being in "The Industry"). Up and coming in Hollywood. As a Midwestern, downscale Boomer, I found that hard to identify with, in any substantial way. That's another planet to me.
So I didn't need to watch a travelogue and documentation of their trips. Yes, I get how it's nice to be twentysomething and text from planes and to be able to afford to fly all over the planet and to pose in front of the Sphinx and the Pyramids and the Eiffel Tower. But that wasn't what I came to see.
There was a little too much of "Alex" in this film. She was indirectly responsible for Tom's accidental death. I found myself blaming her for it, and found it hard to sympathize with her after a short time.
To camp it up and to shoot images just to make someone else jealous on Facebook? Is that the reason why they were up there? Seriously? What a senseless waste. What a tragic ending to a promising life and career. For what?
And as insulting as it might sound, subtitles should have been used when she spoke. If subtitles can be used for people with "foreign" (or even UK English) accents...why not in this case? A lot of what she said was unintelligible.
Certainly that is NOT her fault, but her problem still made it difficult to understand her. And she was, after all, a key figure in this tragic story.
But enough about the negatives. There were so many more positives that were shown. The obvious love Tom and Shane had. They were truly soulmates. The support of Shane's family was a joy to watch. The way Shane took the moral high road when showing Tom's parents' homophobia (and his mother's back-stabbing behavior after her son's death) was truly admirable.
Shane merely stated the facts of this awful tale, instead of further demonizing Tom's father. If pulling a shotgun when your son comes out, threatening to stalk and to "slice up" his partner (a crime, by the way), and conspiring to kill that partner at his own son's funeral is "Midwestern normalcy"...then Jeffrey Dahmer was just a celebrity chef.
I felt I had to see this film, and I am so glad I did. My dear cousin lost her partner of fifteen years to some skank who couldn't stop texting long enough to avoid smashing her while driving through a Miami crosswalk.
It took my cousin's partner a number of days to die. My cousin was not allowed to see her partner. Nor was she able to make any decisions regarding the outcome.
Worse still, the vitim's brother, a Catholic priest, took charge (that collar still carries a lot of clout in hospitals, folks) and kept her on life support and then arranged to have the remains shipped all the way to Maine for a funeral.
Fortunately, the deceased's family was very supportive of my cousin. They were there for her when she arrived. They did not even threaten to kill her. Imagine that!
Love and marriage are not straight things. Or gay things. They are universally human. One does not choose, at a certain age, to be of either orientation. It is destined from birth. We are who we are. And we love...and should be allowed to wed...those whom we choose to love.
Thus, I am already very strongly behind marriage equality and I am willing to do whatever it takes, by any means necessary. But this film did make me shed tears. So I guess it served its purpose.
I hope to hell it affects those on the fence, as well as more than a few homophobes, as much as it affected me.
Every time you make a typo...the errorists win...
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