Dear gays born after 1990: Longtime Companion is on Netflix Instant, so please click there now, watch this seminal 1989 mainstream film for the first time, and wonder why it wasn't taught to you in high school. Seriously, you probably watched Glory and Schindler's List (which is fiiiiine), but this week's Best Movie Ever? candidate Longtime Companion is a pretty great tool for teaching you about other historical essentials such as:
1) The first decade of the AIDS crisis, which could be missing from your social studies textbook
2) Credible camaraderie among LGBT characters on film
3) The flyness of oversized khakis, the hotness of Campbell Scott and Dermot Mulroney, and the scorching, red-hot melodrama of '80s soap operas
World AIDS Day is on December 1st. In time for that, let's review five reasons this rewatchable, but devastating film about how a group of gay friends are changed by the AIDS epidemic must be seen today. I'll start with the fluffier reasons and work my way to the film's greatest merits.
1. Heeeeeyy, this Oscar-ready film is chockablock with male hotness.
Longtime Companion follows the same group of gay friends (and their unforgettable gal pal Lisa, played by Mary-Louise Parker) on nine different dates in nine different years of the 1980s. It begins in Fire Island on July 3, 1981, when the dudes discover a small article in The New York Times about the rise of a new "gay cancer" in New York and California. The dumbfounded group finds ways to chalk up the rising death toll to more common problems like drug use, even if the enigma haunts all of them. As the years progress and some of the members of the group and their loved ones succumb to the disease, the awareness of AIDS evolves just as each well-realized character does too.
Despite what you may have heard, this film isn't really over-the-top in any way. It's unpretentious, and at times heartstopping. Maybe it seems impossible that we'd ever gawk like horny mouthbreathers at how hot some of these dudes are, but honestly, it's not that tough. A lot of Longtime Companion is about sadness and coping -- after all, the title is a reference to how obituaries of AIDS victims obliquely referred to surviving lovers -- but the movie is actually about credible people with lives and jobs and character. They're real-seeming, I'd say. Therefore, their very real gay hotness prevails.
Get a load of a young Dermot Mulroney in that blue tanktop and shades. That Colgate campaign of a grin. That aerodynamic stream of hair. Perhaps his overt sexiness is only matched by the film's main gay character Willy, played by Damages' third-season superstar Campbell Scott. He's giving you Tobey Maguire sensitivity over a Paul Ryan bone structure, and you come to love him even during his routine moments of steely detachment. Thanks, gents!
2. This is a gay media event thathas a lot to say about gays in media events.
One of the main gays is a fun fellow named Sean (Mark Lamos), a screenwriter who works on the QUITE DRAMATIC soap opera Other People. The show hires another happenin' gay named Howard (Patrick Cassidy) to join the series' cast, and soon his character becomes the first out-of-the-closet character on daytime TV. Nervy! While later complications arise with Howard's part on the show, I'm totally in love with the scene in which the gays (and Mary-Louise Parker) watch his characters' big reveal. They snicker at the melodrama, hoot at the male-on-male kiss, and generally clutch their faces in terror at the unbearably ridiculous moments. It's a modern approach to television viewing, and it turns out to be a scene that transcends time pretty effortlessly.
3. Calling Brokeback Mountain: The jumps in time are damn effective.
While certain characters break up or even die of AIDS, the cleverest thing about Longtime Companion is its decision to show us some characters' arcs from beginning to end and let us interpret the arcs of others that don't totally occur onscreen. We see John (Mulroney) enter the hospital with an ailment that a doctor carefully -- er, evasively -- describes as pneumonia, and by the time the movie jumps to 1982, his arc is well over. Meanwhile, Sean's sickness is well-explored as it unfolds slowly over the decade, and it culminates in a very famous scene that we'll discuss momentarily. Unlike Brokeback Mountain, in which the years-long gaps between scene signal poetically how time finds the lost characters again and again, here the gaps in time reflect how these characters are simply living real lives. We're just happening to catch certain blips of their realities, and that manages to make every character more sympathetic.
4. Newsflash: Mary-Louise Parker is a star!
We hadn't glimpsed Mary-Louise Parker in Fried Green Tomatoes yet when Longtime Companion came out, but her potential for stardom was clear: Every moment MLP is onscreen, she emits both a commitment to character and command that feels really, really genuine. After a key character dies, she cracks a joke about a sequined outfit that turns out to be the most powerfully cathartic and human moment in the movie. And how about that accent? Surely Fannie Flagg dug that immediately. After over 125 seasons of Weeds, it's easy to overestimate MLP's versatility as a thespian, but never forget that she could capture your glance even in a room of betanktopped males.
5. The "let go" scene. Oh, the "let go" scene.
OK. Here's the reason the movie earned the majority of its Oscar buzz: David (Bruce Davison), whose partner Sean's suffering becomes unbearable for him in the climactic scene, finds himself encouraging the love of his life to let go and perish. It's a solemn encouragement, but uitimately a phenomenally loving one, and you find yourself almost hypnotized by the way he handles Sean's panting and panic. Davison nabbed an Oscar nod for his work here, and he even earned the Golden Globe. As far as Terms of Endearment-esque hospital moments, this is one that remains powerful and decidedly un-gimmicky. You know what you believe, watching this? That a gay man is comforting his lover as he dies of AIDS. Every expression, encuraging smile, devastating vocal inflection, and simple line of dialogue sells it. You're shattered by this moment, but somehow, you could also live in it. And naturally, that's what Longtime Companion is most about: what do with living when an unthinkable epidemic forces you time and again to confront death.
Will you watch Longtime Companion on World AIDS Day? When's the last time you watched it?
You can find previousBest Movie Ever? selections here.
