Parallel Sons

PARALLEL SONS is a very fine piece of work, a film ahead of its time, a film that may yet surface in the theaters since the success of 'Brokeback Mountain'. It deserves that kind of attention. Writer Director John G. Young (The Reception) takes on razor-sharp issues, molds them in a natural, non-exploitational way, and finishes his message with a calm clap of thunder. This little film contains more food for thought and hopefully for discussion than most of the last ten years since it was first released.

Seth Carlson (Gabriel Mann) lives in the Adirondacks in a little town closed off form progressive society. He is a gentle soul, a closeted gay out of necessity, a budding artist and a young man infatuated with African American culture, so much so that he wears his blond hair in dread locks and paints muscular Black men and African American symbols. His father barely tolerates his oddities, his little sister shares his secrets, and Seth longs to leave the choking little town for New York City.

Seth briefly views a Black man in custody in the sheriff's car: an eye to eye connect occurs. That night in the diner in which Seth works the Black man Knowledge Johnson (Laurence Mason) sneaks into the diner and robs Seth at gunpoint, only to collapse from a wound inflicted during his escape from a correctional facility. Seth is drawn to Knowledge, and when Knowledge faints, Seth sequesters him in a little cabin where he nurses him back to health. In the process of the healing the two men bond and become sexually committed to each other. Knowledge sees his only hope for survival as an outlaw being an escape across the Canadian border and the two plan for this adventure, Seth suffering setbacks from a town turned against him, and it is in the escape attempt that the tragedies occur that leave the story with many subtexts.

The film is beautifully shot by Matthew M. Howe and scored by Emile Menasche, but it is the acting skills of Mann and Mason that allow director Young to make this understated film work so well. The supporting cast is also very good, each underplaying roles to the benefit of the progression toward the devastating ending. By remaining to a sensitive story, economically written for the screen, Young is able to bring the audience to face some frighteningly real issues about bigotry and prejudice that tangentially includes color and sexuality. Highly recommended, Grady Harp

A very impressing and moving picture with a very beautiful and very original story, and the very sincere way it is told. Apart from the end the movie could be compared to the quite successful British movie "Beautifull Thing" with a similar, but even less probable love story, and a more harsh, less glossy way of telling the story. I think the movie could have been much more successful -and I would have equally, or more liked it- if it hadn't such a sad ending: Without the ending it could actually be a 'feel good' movie, and maybe it would have gotten more of the success it deserves (to my opinion). But then-again this ending is probably more realistic...(sniff)

At the end of this movie I sat in silence absorbing the impact of the movie. Although I have only seen the movie once, back in 1996, it still stays with me. It is a story that is beautifully filmed and very well told. It is impossible to describe the details of this movie other than to say that it struck me as very true to life.

You can count the number of gay films that have featured black actors as main characters (I actually know of four: two of which were documentaries and two were German films by Fassbinder). That's enough reason to make anyone sit up and take notice of this film even if it were bad. But the sad thing - in correlation to this obscure rating at IMDb - is that this is not a bad film. It's actually quite good. A young white male is having a hard enough time being gay in a rural town, on top of that he is obsessed with Afro-American culture, and African-American men. When a black man does show up on the lam from the law, the white guy takes him in and cares for him (the black man had been shot escaping from the police). This plot is in essence sort of an old-fashioned fairy tale, usually fashioned for a lonely young woman who takes in the misguided but non-dangerous criminal, nourishing him back to health. But despite the rather pat plot (why does the black guy always have to be a criminal?), there is an authenticity to the characters and to the town that surrounds them. You feel their desperation and sense of alienation. It's an old-fashioned movie with a 'modern' sensibility, but it thankfully never gets self-conscious about its black-gay twist. It's too busy being honest to the emotions of the characters (to all the characters - no one in the small town is stereotyped). At a time when gay films are becoming as bland and predictable as Hollywood films, and black films assume there are no black men who are gay, this film is a very bold, original experience.

This is a very underrated drama about an encounter between two young, gay men, one black, one white, in a mountain town in New York's Adirondacks, in which the "parallels" between the two men's lives, and their tragic outcome plumb depths of several fundamental issues: growing up gay in a hostile society, racism, gun violence, and adolescent independence. While the sleepy little town's exterior calm is shattered by the appearance of a black escapee from a state mental facility for convicts, this same escapee provides a solution to Seth Carlson's search for his deepest yearnings. At the same time, Seth provides a solution for the escapee's (Knowledge's) life-and-death emergency, bringing the two together through an amazing process of derring-do and cultural and sexual bonding. The story is told with just enough hometown realism to make it thoroughly believable, if ultimately tragic. The two main characters are acted with stellar sensitivity by Gabriel Mick (Seth) and Laurence Mason (Knowledge). Mick's casting is particularly apt. The film takes full advantage of the glorious mountain setting as well as the rural mores and the isolation of its small-town, upstate subject community. This film is a must-see for all young, gay American men!