The Twilight of the Golds

I have avoided watching this movie (or seeing the play upon which it is based) because I expected that it would be sort of low-quality and very "preachy." But, somehow I ended up with a VHS copy and fortunately in working my way through my VHS shelf, I got to it and threw it in the VCR for a look.

To my surprise, the film is actually pretty good. The number of strong actors in the cast helps a lot. I expected the storyline to feel mechanical but (although it is not wildly original and doesn't veer too far from where you'd expect) it actually is a step or two better than the the normal family-in-crisis-TV-movie. The actions and reactions of the characters feel reasonably realistic and not simply designed to create drama or lay out a series of points of view. And the author seems to assume that his audience has some intelligence, making his points without having any characters stand in front of a camera and "speechify." There are a couple of sort of annoying gay clichés that I would have loved to edit out, but nothing too wildly stupid.

And, of course, the underlying questions raised in the film about the coming problem of genetic engineering are both interesting and scary (and are related to any number of human characteristics beyond sexual orientation.) All-in-all, not a movie to set the world on fire, but a pretty solid and reasonably engaging piece of entertainment.

I found this film to be very offensive, because it make the "homosexual" seem to be a "disease" that people should try to stop. No matter what anyone's child is, the mother and father should love them no matter what, even though the happy ending makes everyone think that she's the good one for what she chooses, but still...she's not because of even the thought of having an abortion knowing how the kid will turn out in a few years is bad 'parenting' or whatever you want to call it. I felt that the ending was to unreal, this is the 90s and people hold grudges, if this was a true story I don't think David would have done what he did at the end, EVEN though it was touching and good because everyone wants to see family's together at the end. Call me stupid and wrong, but I think that he really would have not done what he did at the end, knowing that he might not be here on earth if they had this kind of technology back then when he was born. I know that's wrong, but it's true. Faye Dunaway was excellent, as was Brendan Fraser.

All and all, I liked this movie, even though it was kind of pathetic and offensive.

This film was touching. It will make people question their beliefs and raises a lot of moral questions. The casting was very well choosen. Bredan Fraser does a wonderful job of playing a gay man torn over his families dilemma of having another gay child. It is a far stretch from his boy next door image.It shows his ability to portray a wide variety of characters. His sister, played by Jennifer Beals, is pregnant with a child that may possibly be gay. Her and her husband find out, through genetic testing, that their unborn child may grow up to be gay. Her family tries to help her decide if she should keep the child. Since David ( Fraser) is gay he causes his family to deal with the issue in a way they are not prepared to do. His family does not want to make this child suffer as David has. It will make you question yourself as to if there are somethings better off not to know. For instance is genetic testing for such things right and what would you do in that situation? I think this movie is worth watching.

I've seen so many negative comments about this film, and I have none...I thought the acting, subject matter and direction was straightforward and thought provoking. The film's matter-of-fact tone about the possibility of determining orientation force the viewer to deal with the issues presented here, making the discussion intense. Performances all good here, and we're reminded of the acting power of both Brendan Fraser and Jennifer Beals, who thoroughly impressed me here, not to mention the film's biggest surprise, Garry Marshall, who turns in a really solid performance as their father. Seek this out and enjoy an intelligent, well done film.

This bold, worrying dramatic comedy embarks upon the concern of a thus far fictional form of genetic testing that would ascertain the sexual orientation, among other things of course, of an unborn child. When Suzanne Gold-Stein, played by the beautiful Jennifer Beals, is told by her disconcerted husband that their son is destined to be gay, she contemplates aborting the fetus, much to the pent-up rage and panic of her gay brother, a normally happy-go- lucky creative whose sexual orientation has never been completely accepted and certainly never embraced by the Gold family.

The story gallantly hits on the nature and wrongful persecution of homosexuals. Early in the story, one can hardly believe how dramatic the Gold family's reaction is when the genetic discovery is made, how they can hardly say the word "gay," something one of their own flesh and blood naturally is. It's a very scary story, one that threatens humanity with itself, knowingly projecting a nightmarish perception of what may come when we truly make a technological breakthrough that actually benefits civilization, telling a fortunate story of a mere handful of characters who learn true acceptance, and not all of them do, for it just might be hopeless to end the neverending, inexplicable prejudice that plagues our progression and co-existence.

When a pastor, for instance, claims that if everyone were gay, there would be no society, he must also reflect upon the idea that if everyone were a pastor, there would be no society due to the vow of chastity. In fact, if everyone had in common any sort of orientation, there would be no society because everyone would be essentially the same. That is what is so scary about the film's suggested prediction of genetic testing for pregnancy. If people can successfully and knowingly avoid having gay, biracial, handicapped, autistic, or any other sort of a parent's less than preferable idea of a baby, society will slowly disappear.

To deny not only the rights and acceptance of homosexuals, but to also deny them existence, is to deny those of the countless gay and bi people of notoriety who've contributed so much to culture: social reformer Jane Addams, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, writers Edward Albee, James Baldwin, Alan Ball, Djuna Barnes, Alan Bennett, William S. Burroughs, Samuel Butler, Truman Capote, Noel Coward, Hart Crane, Quentin Crisp, Michael Cunningham, E.M. Forster, Michel Foucault, Nigel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams, painters Francis Bacon, Jean-Michael Basquiat, filmmakers Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, Kenneth Anger, Marcel Carné, Jean Cocteau, George Cukor, Sergei Eisenstein, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Todd Haynes, James Ivory, Gus Van Sant, costume designer Edith Head, singers Melissa Etheridge, Billie Holiday, actors Mario Cantone, Rupert Everett, Harvey Fierstein, Stephen Fry, Nathan Lane, Charles Laughton, Anthony Rapp, composers Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Francis Poulenc, Stephen Sondheim, Tchaikovsky, actresses Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi, Cherry Jones, Jodie Foster, Mayor of West Hollywood John Duran, et cetera. The more we "straight" people socialize with, give birth to, and acknowledge the historically positive effect of homosexuals, there will be more of a face given to the gay, bisexual, and lesbian community. We will see that they are of the same nature, fears, and hardships as the rest of us. The movie's hypothesis scares me that that face could be taken away.

If only this incredible story had been supplied with a stronger sense of production value. It feels like a TV movie. It isn't given any atmosphere or visceral power, which would have done wonders for it. The cast is great, most memorably Brendan Fraser, although Faye Dunaway is miscast. She does not seem at home in her role as Fraser's mother. It seems more of an Anne Bancroft role, for instance. The constant use of David Bowie's Under Pressure on the soundtrack seems exchangeable with so many other pop songs, the camera-work is simple point-and-shoot lack of precision and if certain things like that were given more attention, this could have been a really great film.