Un compagnon de longue date

I was a physician in New York City from 1989 until 1992, and saw a tremendous number of people with AIDS. I feel that this movie, although it may appear to be dated, is an excellent portrayl of events that were all too common at that time. It gives a good sense of the confusion, misinformation, sense of being lost, and of not knowing what to do for those suffering and for their friends and companions. The actors did an excellent job in showing this. I believe that this movie is still important and merits being shown often.

Longtime Companion chronicles the lives of a group of gay men during the 1980s. The focus of the film is AIDS, unknown to the men when the film opens in 1981, but by the end of the story in 1989, it has become the central defining event in the lives of the survivors. Shot in almost documentary style the story is told almost matter-of-factly. But the reality of the lives of the men in the story is not matter-of-fact; they are dying and dying in the prime of their lives. It's heart-rending. In this, the movie succeeds very well, raising awareness of the effects of AIDS, and putting a human face to its victims.

The title is the newspaper obituary euphemism for a gay lover, and yet another discreet but frustrating reminder of how mainstream heterosexual society avoids confronting the AIDS epidemic. In an effort perhaps to offset public ignorance, Norman René's film of the same name almost resembles an AIDS awareness primer, dramatizing the deadly progress of the disease through the gay community since the summer of 1981, when 'safe sex' merely meant anything goes, but don't get caught. Like other American Playhouse productions the film is simple, unpretentious, and no less rewarding for being so straightforward. René and writer Craig Lucas have wisely resisted the temptation to make a 'Love Story'-style terminal illness melodrama, concentrating instead on the bittersweet pain and bravery of awkward hospital visitations and quiet deathbed encounters. Only the forced optimism of the final daydream rings false, unavoidably since the epidemic itself (still) has yet to be resolved by anything resembling a cure. The balance of the film is simply too honest to support such sentimental wish-fulfillment fantasies.

As the famous Blondie ballad The Tide Is High opens Longtime Companions the song got me thinking. The Tide was high for LGBT people in 1981 as we began winning more and more battles for civil rights ordinances in various municipalities across the country. Then life and the tide ebbed radically as a bisexual man brought a virus over from Africa that had been decimating population on that continent and it spread like a prairie fire amongst us. Longtime Companions focuses on the intertwining lives of several gay men and how the plague virus affected both the infected and those around them.

I lost so many people in the next 15 or so years I feel like an Ishmael at times, left alive to tell the tale. That's what Longtime Companions does, it tells the tale of the loss of so much from the most famous names of all like Rock Hudson to the most insignificant in the cosmic scheme of things. How much art, music, science, human freedom, name the field could have advanced if these people had lived their allotted normal lifespan. Those who survived and especially those who worked in the field have a responsibility to be Ishmaels.

Longtime Companions boasts a great ensemble cast that functions like a well tuned Rolex watch. Some of my favorites are Patrick Cassidy the soap opera hunk who loses his job and eventually his fight for life. Campbell Scott who throws himself into the fight after losing his Longtime Companion. Most of all lovers Bruce Davison and Mark Lamos and there will be no dry eyes as you see Davison guide Lamos from one world to the next.

Two things standout for me in the Eighties which decade this film covers about AIDS. The first was in 1983 and my first exposure to someone with the virus. In my working life with New York State Crime Victims Board and after I had come out at work, I got a call from a bedridden man in Tribeca whose home health attendant had just robbed him blind of everything and he called us because the cops at New York's 1st precinct refused to go to even take the report. As our office was downtown and my dear friend Ermano Stingo lived there as well, we both went to this man's flat, a rather dingy place overlooking the Hudson River that was pretty well emptied of most of what was there save this bedridden man with lesions going into his last stage of life. Sad to say both of us saw that sight a lot more over the next decade. I filled out my paper work for a claim, witnessed his signature and Ermano went to the 1st precinct to file the report on the victim's behalf. To this day I wish I could recall his name, but Ermano is also now in another world.

The second thing was the hearings for the New York City gay civil rights law. At the many forums the City Council gave us and our opposition to testify for the bill, I remember a lot of the homophobes walking in with surgical masks covering their faces as if that would prevent them from catching the disease from the opposition which they all assumed were sufferers or carriers. How ignorant they were and still are and worse how they did not want to be dissuaded from their firmly held beliefs. A frightening time for all.

To understand AIDS and its impact on LGBT people and society as well you have to see Longtime Companions. And this review is dedicated to both my claimant in the Tribeca flat and to the first person that I knew that died of AIDS, a bartender named Bobby Lynn who worked in a long since gone gay bar in Brooklyn Heights.

When I watched this for the first time, I like many that went through this time period, identified with most of the characters in this movie at one time or another. I had my sister watch this movie (a devoted Pentecostal) she said it was the sadist thing she had ever seen. I felt that she got the message, Gay or Straight, this was a tragedy that had happened to everyday people, and still is happening, and not just to "those people". She, like many, never wanted to see past the homosexual thing. With this film she saw a clip of life, albeit a condensed version, of how something so out of control entered, affected and was handled by people like herself both gay and straight. I told her that was the way it I felt it was for many of us dealing with this disease that had taken so many of my friends and colleagues. I also liked how this movie didn't victimize, or make a villain out of any of the characters nor did it make anyone a saint either. I felt the topic was handled with good taste, considering how it was something most people didn't want to think about. With the majority of the audience being straight and secure in the fact that this only happened to other people who were deserving of what they got. I also felt that this movie showed the truth although a bit Hollywood and too polished (not a docudrama, definitely a movie) it did a good job of making a difficult subject much more palatable and sympathetic to folks that had never had it happen to them or to those they love. The progression of the movie conveyed the feeling most had in regards to how fast things happened. One day someone was here the next they were gone. I also felt that the actors, many non gay, did brilliant performances not playing stereotype's but keeping it real as it should be. Since most gay men and women I know don't act all that different from everyone else. I for one am tired of gays being portrayed as only hair stylist and drag queens, much as I am sure African-Americans were tired of their stereotypes of only being the hired help or as ignorant simpletons. This was not the best movie I have ever seen, but I feel it is one of the best dealing with this subject matter. The end of this movie still gets to me, every time I see it, if only that could happen like that, I too "just want to be there"