At one point in Swan Song, upon noting the closing of a small community's original and only gay dive bar, Udo Kier asks "but where will we dance?" Swan Song is about loss, specifically queer loss, loss of ways of life that just don't exist any longer, loss of identities which no longer fit into modern experiences, loss of health including mental health. Life moves on. As the world opens up for queer men the old ways of surviving fall away. As we age, our connections to what is going on around us slips away. "I wouldn't even know how to be gay anymore" he says watching a whole new world unfold around him.
Kier plays Mr. Pat with the same queer, outsider panache that he has brought to his roles in the past, only here he gets to be the centre of the story, not the slightly sinister yet harmless other he usually plays. He gets to be the fully human, fully flawed aging queen at the end of his life making glorious drama and bad decisions. He gives dignity to a much derided group of men who never get the credit for all their legacy they leave behind for younger LGBTQ+ people. And he is a delight, delivering a performance filled with pain and joy. He isn't a wise elder to be a device in the growth of a younger main character. He isn't a creepy troll to be feared or pitied or derided. He is the hero of this story and he's full of flaws and humanity. And he gets some closure with a world that never truly had a place for him, even amongst those who claimed to befriend him.
Everything about Swan Song is wonderfully indie. Director Stephens brings his underground sensibilities to what is probably his most mainstream film. Sure he has cast recognizable names in his drama but he keeps the guerrilla style of film making. It still feels like it was made on a shoestring budget and impresses with all that it gets away with. Stephens spins a delightful story that packs powerful pathos throughout while remaining wildly entertaining. It is joyous and painful, perhaps very much like the lives of men like Pat.
There is a wonderful use of unreliable narrator element to the film that Stephen uses both through expressing Pat's mental health but also through simply acknowledging how much of what we experience is through perception. How much of what we see happen in Swan Song is real is a mystery and I wouldn't want it any other way. And even though the film ends exactly where we think it will it does so with grace and with a satisfaction that just makes you glad you got to experience it.
Swan Song
Starring: Udo Kier, Jennifer Coolidge, Linda Evans, Michael Urie
Writer/Director: Todd Stephens
No comments:
Post a Comment