Chris & Don: A Love Story

It looks like we will finally be able to watch this masterpiece documentary in theaters as distributor Zeitgeist has picked up the Miami Festival winner for a limited release. Produced by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, a team of longtime documentary authors whose "Mandala" revealed a few years ago a very sophisticated talent in visual storytelling, "Chris & Don" is the love story between famous playwright Christopher Isherwood and artist Don Bachardy in the golden years of Hollywood, with exclusive interviews and footage with actors and other personalities. Although Isherwood and Bachardy's was a homosexual love during a time when these relationships were looked at with criticism even in the more liberal California, the movie is somehow capable of setting the sexual factor aside and focus instead on the depth of the protagonists' personality. By the end of the movie you feel so intimate with both, that it is almost natural to want to know more about them and their art. A refined, well directed portrait and an opportunity for exemplary film-making that should easily captivate audiences.

For how unusual and "scandalous" the love story portrayed in this movie can be (or rather, could have been at the time the facts took place), the way it is narrated by the film-making and producing duo of Guido Santi and Tina Mascara is so sophisticated, gentle and harmonious that it really brings you back to the atmosphere in the most romantic Hollywood movies of the fifties. Perhaps it's because the sentimental relationship between Isherwood and Bachardy was mediated by such an incredible artistic exchange that it elevated their passion to the ranks of a work of art. Or perhaps it's because the authors have wisely elected to look at their love with unpretentious discretion, as if the camera was always attempting to remain unobtrusive enough to ensure the utmost authenticity in Bachardy's moving and vivid memories of their past together. Overall, this touching documentary has bestowed me with a higher feeling of satisfaction than a regular movie as I realised that real love does not only exist in fiction, but occurs, if rarely, in reality. Quite an extraordinary experience in movie-making, this one.

Portrait artist Don Bachardy, still active in his seventies, reflects on his 30-year love affair with British writer Christopher Isherwood, who was 30 years Bachardy's senior. Meeting in early-1950s Southern California, the bright-eyed, star-worshiping young man and the immigrated author-turned-screenwriter seemed to have little in common, yet their attraction and devotion to one another proved all their naysayers wrong. Although intriguing as both a microcosm of homosexuality in the '50s (and the ways in which it was greeted by the heterosexual community) as well as an enduring love story, this exquisite documentary also touches tenderly on age, on talent, on family and friends, and on reflections of the past from a still-sharp and brilliant mind. Bachardy is a colorful character, a sweet and sentimental fellow, and his thoughts are heightened visually by wonderful home movies of his journey with Isherwood, days both blissful and turbulent. Michael York narrates succinctly from the diaries Isherwood kept from 1939-1960, and several celebrities and biographers recount their experiences in knowing or researching the two men. This is as complete and satisfying a documented memoir as you're likely to see. It's also an extraordinarily moving testament to the human condition. ***1/2 from ****

This movie can easily be seen as a meditation. It is a kind of wonderful meditation on impermanence, the transient nature of youth, beauty and health, on the inevitability of loss and finally on the Triumph of Death. An art of losing and dealing with sorrow.

It is not often in our days that someone has the time and is being allowed a slow pace when talking to you as in this film. Especially not on very subtle and intimate matters. That is praiseworthy. Not often either do you see love treated spiritually. Not often do you see someone follow a life partner to the very gate of Death and past. Making drawings of the corpse, lovingly, without disgust or even crying. That is an impressive remaining within reality.

Highly recommendable.

I know nothing, before see this documentary, about this relation. But it was not so surprising remembering the novel A Single Man and its adaptation by Tom Ford.

A provocative love story between two men defined by 30 years age difference. This is the premise and it works very little because, scene by scene, in the embroidery of Don Bachardy memories, grace to wisdome of directors and words of guests, footage and the precise- profound inspired definition of levels of relation and biography of both, , the eccentric, presumed , romance , forbbiden, easy to blame, becomes only a beautiful portrait of friendship, education, decisions, crisis , noble decision in tough moment, affection, relation with its ordinary ingredients and image of a form, not so original, of happiness. And, I admitt, scene by scene, myself I was falling in love for Don Bachardy.

At the end, touching works not as the worst word to define this long term relation, impling education, affection, comradery and define of life together.