Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions. This series is usually on Wednesday's but tomorrow Ann Dowd is in the house. Stay tuned! - Editor
Last week we looked at the earnest adaptation of one of the best-selling non-fiction account of the early years of the AIDS epidemic, And the Band Played On. It feels rather like a backhanded compliment to the well-meaning if sprawling film, but you should really watch it to see Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Ian McKellen, Swoosie Kurtz and Richard Gere doing their thing. This week, we’re still not done looking at the AIDS epidemic. You have to begin to wonder whether HBO knew there were other stories worth telling that included the LGBT community, but then AIDS really was seismic in the way it defined LGBT representation in the decade(s) that followed, so it’s hard to argue against its ubiquity.
But ubiquitous doesn't describe the next topic: Here we are with the moving directorial debut of a famous actor starring a six-time Oscar nominee, an Oscar winner, a future Oscar nominee, a startlet from a Hollywood dynasty, and a young actor who’d go on to become a Tony winner and then the star in a long-running successful medical drama, and it is almost impossible to find. This week we're talking In the Gloaming...
In the Gloaming (1997)
Directed by: Christopher Reeve (yes, Superman himself!)
Written by: Will Scheffer (based on a New Yorker story by Alice Elliot Dark)
Starring: Glenn Close, Bridget Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Sean Leonard, and David Strathairn.
In the Gloaming, adapted from Alice Elliot Dark’s short story of the same name focuses on Danny, a thirty-something gay man who returns to his family home to, as Goldberg’s nurse Myrna bluntly puts it, die. He spends his last months at home getting to know his mother, Janet (Close).
“You know, his T-cell count is so low no Dr Berman or anybody else can really save him. So he’s come home to die.”
The story may sound sentimental (and it is) but it is so quiet, so self-effacing and unassuming, that it never tilts into maudlin territory. Much of this is in the faithful adaptation of Dark’s writing, which is surprisingly heartbreaking given its economy. On the first page she notes that Danny “wasn’t cut out to be the brave one, the one who would inspire everybody to walk away from a visit with him feeling uplifted, shaking their heads in wonder. He had liked being the most handsome and missed it very much; he was not a good victim.” It’s that final clause that unlocks Danny’s vexed relationship with his current state, one which propels the little plot there is in the film. Indeed, divided as it is into vignettes during the “gloaming” (the time at dusk when “the whole world would look like the Highlands on a summer night”), the film functions more as a character study of Danny’s mother, Janet. We see her helplessly tend to her dying son, forgo her increasingly stale marriage with a man who can barely bring himself to face his son, and focus instead on craving those evening talks with Danny. From Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons to Damages, Close has always worked best in villainess mode, making great use of her cutting cheekbones and icy blond hair. That may be why I’m always so surprised when she plays these softened roles, instantly making me remember how aptly she can play them.
“Suddenly she realized, [Danny] had been the love of her life.” - Elliot Dark
This film, which is all about half-finished thoughts and half-started conversations, shines brightest when it features Danny and Janet just talking about movies. “What’s your favorite movie?” Danny asks, hoping to get to know his mother better during his last couple of months. “Oh, gosh there’s so many!” she says. “To tell you the truth, it keeps changing because it always depends on what kind of stories make sense to me at the time. You know, what stories speak to me.” She eventually caves and singles out E.T., a movie, she says about “lost childhood. So funny. So sad.” As Danny gets worse their relationship flourishes, returning them to the very happy childhood Reeve’s initial images offer us. The film even treats us to Glenn singing Danny a lullaby as they lay outside watching the night-sky, an inadvertent preview of the dulcet motherly tones Close would bring to Disney’s Tarzan a mere two years later.
Ultimately, in focusing on this mother/son relationship, one which has been culturally burdened with pathology (Janet’s daughter at one point frustratingly blurts out, "You know what your over-attentions did to him,” a tricky line the film leaves intentionally hanging, neither endorsing it nor outright disowning its implications), In the Gloaming shifts the conversation away from disease and bureaucracy and, much like Fierstein’s Tidy Endings, hones in on the struggles of those on the outskirts of the epidemic; the loved ones left behind who had no language and no practice in a grief that so squarely demanded more than tolerance, more than acceptance.
“Danny you know I have always accepted you.”
“Perhaps you have, but you’ve never participated.”
In moments like those, the film cut right through me, echoing many conversations I myself have had with my mother (or worse, ones I wish I could still have). The film is ultimately yet another story about a privileged white gay man whose illness is unburdened by issues of class and race, of rejection and homelessness, of medical bills and bureaucracy, but it's oh so touching in its insularity that I really wish it were more readily avaiable so we can talk more about it.
Fun Fact: Glenn was, obviously, nominated for her performance for every TV award she was eligible for, and I was awestruck discovering what a beautiful Emmy lineup for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special 1997 gave us. Alongside Close was Meryl Streep (...First Do No Harm), Helen Mirren (for Prime Suspect 5: Errors of Judgment), Stockard Channing (An Unexpected Family) and eventual winner Alfre Woodard (Miss Evers' Boys). It doesn’t get more early 90s actressy than that, no? [Bonus Emmy Stat: As of 2015, those five women have amassed 57 nominations and 15 (!!) wins among them. Can you guess (without looking it up!) who’s ahead in both wins and nominations?]
Next week: We finally break free of gay men as we look at "Gia," a biopic of supermodel Gia Marie Carangi which garnered Angelina Jolie rave reviews and her very first SAG award, surely priming her for her Oscar win the following year. You can watch it on Amazon Prime/HBO Go.