Looking for Langston

If you're looking for a film about Langston Hughes, look elsewhere. I saw the film at the Nuart in West Los Angeles, one of the premiere specialty theaters in town. It was playing on a double bill with the virtually unwatchable, ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE GETS HIS NIPPLE PIERCED. After suffering through that hideous film, I was then subjected to a film supposedly about Langston Hughes, but really nothing more than a production designer demo. The film looked nice, but outside of a few short clips of Hughes, you wouldn't even know that the film was about him. Rather than explore the life of one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, the film seems more interested in parading images of gay men on the screen. The film doesn't even seem to explore the alleged homosexuality of Langston Hughes, at least not in a way that a heterosexual can understand. After the film was over, the audience was so disappointed, that the line for patrons to get their money back was longer than the line to purchase tickets.

Issac Julien's incredibly lush visual exploration of the idea of Langston Hughes' sexuality. In this film Julien creates a space of queer liberation around an African-American literary icon. Julien stated in an interview with the great poet Essex Hemphill (whose writing is used as text in the film) that he sought to "construct a narrative that would allow viewers to meditate and to think, rather than be told." This is exactly what is accomplished in this profoundly beautiful and intellectually thrilling short film.

A lush, seamless integration of exquisite footage into a cinematic meditation revolving around the alleged homosexuality of Langston Hughes. Whether it was so or not, is harmlessly irrelevant; Essex Hemphill and Isaac Julien also offer us a powerful short-circuit between beauty, art and politics. How much Langston Hughes was involved into this gives more relief to the inquiry.

And such electric charge between the muse (Beauty, a staggeringly handsome man) and the poet. Watch that kiss, and you'll know this is a rare example on screen of tenderness and engagement contra the usual hastiness that surrounds such encounters, reminding us that passion is not a lustful precipitated affair only, but takes on a rhythm that is as political as poetic. (Perhaps Essex Hemphill's verses are more ambitious than inspired here, compared to the ones in "Tongues Untied," but the reciting is again exemplary.)

Add to that a pinch of triangulated passion by a white rival. (Or is it not a rival, since his presence obscenely suggests Beauty is rent, making all the more ambiguous and powerful the meditation?) And contrast to it the serene, exquisite presence of the actor portraying the poet, and the jazzy poet himself reciting with a terrific sense of rhythm some of his verse, ambivalently resounding in the end; matching his voice, the gripping voice of Toni Morrison reading James Baldwin in the beginning for great effect. And affect.

The cinematography is superb, evoking George Platt Lynes, a voyeur of the Harlem Renaissance.

A film on a par with Jean Genet's landmark "Un Chant d' Amour" and Derek Jarman's poetic studies.

Looking for Langston is a beautifully photographed faux travelogue through the Harlem Renaissance using the poetry of Langston Hughes alongside those of Richard Bruce Nugent, James Baldwin, and Essex Hemphill. Also shown are the controversial photographs of black men by the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Director Julien also uses a cast of actors to recreate the moving image scenes of the era, chiefly focusing o poems and words about the homosexuality at odds with the established black America's desire for more assimilation. Juxtaposing the words with images of desire both fulfilled and unfulfilled in exquisite black and white creates an atmosphere that is both erotic and withholding, spaced out, yet full of embrace.

A phenomenal artistic achievement!