Coming Out

Though I saw this movie only once, I still remember it and will probably for ever. None of the gay themed films I saw described better the problems and relations in our community. This East Germany film was very important for me, because, back in those times, I saw myself in the role of the main character. Being afraid of being myself and how to deal with it - that is the idea of the film. It wants to say to all of "us", and I would quote here one of my first boyfriends: "No matter what the world thinks about you, do what makes you happy." Really, that is what matters. You and the other one. This movie helped me a lot. And I am not afraid of being myself anymore.

This movie is a wonderful story and an artifact both cultural and historical. It takes us across the Berlin Wall in the last year of the German Democratic Republic. In the background we hear avant garde electronic music, and when the characters go to the theatre, we see a modern fanciful production. It is a reminder of German modernism in the arts, something that one rarely sees on the screen.

The students in Phillip's (the protagonist's) high school class write their essays about a quote from Bertolt Brecht. This quote, about a common man in his own community, goes a long way to explaining the apparent lack of an ending. I confess that I found the ending a bit odd until I watched the movie a second time. The protagonist is not going to live a Hollywood 'happy ending'. He is going to live in the back streets that are gay East Berlin. He will not have the easy life he adopts at the beginning of the movie, and he is going to continue being a high school teacher. Phillip is not going to allow the East German state, his profession, his family or his girl friend to supress his own self. He is living on a tight wire, but he is an ordinary citizen of a socialist state.

The non-capitalist industrial society that serves as the backdrop for this coming of age story is no more. It is refreshing to see a movie without product placements and the crass commercialism. Coming Out is a flash back to a society where gays were repressed but lived out their lives in spite of society. If you think Bush's America is repressive, imagine living in a police state like East Germany with the Berlin wall. This fact gives Phillip's coming out such significance. His dilemma makes modern American gay life seem comparatively carefree. We take so much for granted.

The director is obviously accomplished. The budget is adequate so we are spared the technical problems of gay cinema on a shoe string. The acting and dialog are convincing . The German is exceptionally crisp and clear, allowing someone with a first year college course in German to catch subtleties that are not captioned. The cinematography is good and moves the plot forward.

This film was erotic without being pornographic. It was far more realistic than Maurice for example. It touched me in a way that coming out films rarely do. It reminded me of the first time I went to a gay bar in a small city, all quite self-conscious and anxious and awed. More importantly, it reminded me of what I wanted to find there.

This is a very interesting and stylish movie, unlike any other gay themed movie I know. It's East German, made just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The paranoia, seriousness and drabness of East Berlin is a palpable atmosphere, and the illicit illegality of homosexuality there at the time. There are echoes of an expressionistic Berlin cabaret tradition: the exaggeration in the dance club scenes, and the song in the experimental theater/concert scene. The angst rings true. The atonality of some of the music in the soundtrack adds to the angst. The director obviously sees something "atonal" about these young men in love, but maybe it reflects the cultural context rather than disapproval? The quiet conversation scenes without scoring seem a little like Bergman in style.

I think it would be a mistake to view the self-loathing of the gay men in this movie, or the main character's mother's sad disappointment over her son's sexuality, with American eyes of the 21st Century, or those of the much freer Europe of current times. And even today there are still plenty of paranoid, secretive young gay men around, even in progressive countries.

The film tries to kindle an understanding on valuing one's sexual orientation and identity. Many gay people experience critical times when they have to decide who to tell about their sexuality. In making this disclosure they are often fearful of negative reactions, rejection and causing upset and distress to the person they are telling. Sometimes a person may try 'coming out' to a supportive friend as a precursor to talking to parents or partner in order to rehearse their own part and to judge reactions. The film "Coming Out" serves as an eye-opener for those who are anxious and unsure of their own sexual identities. It has relevant issue that encourages me to recognize new perspectives based on realities in the society. It actually stimulates me to think critically. The story has a logical flow and has various twists. Although the story is not new for me (cause I've already read the same story from a book) the execution enables the film to stand out and appear to be revealing. I was not bored watching the whole film. I used to take a nap when I view DEFA films in my film class but I was surprised, this movie kept me awake.

COMING OUT is a seventeen-year-old movie, created in East Germany while under Communist rule, about the dangerous milieu in which gay men closeted their identity. It is a stunning achievement in that it presents the agony of coming to grips with sexual identity in a suppressive atmosphere, opening to public viewing the night the Berlin Wall tumbled. With this knowledge the story of these people is all the more heartbreaking with the chance that life for each character would have been different if told a few months later! The real tragedy is that the story is timeless and universal: the trauma of young people coming out is still potentially as wracked with anguish as the trauma of this film.

Philipp (handsome young Matthias Freihof) is a popular high school teacher, tightly in the closet, who happens to bump into (literally) an open and needy pretty girl Tanya (Dagmar Manzel) who immediately invites him to her apartment and introduces him to her bed. They form a comfortable bond, Philipp thinking his sexual identity problem is solved. Then Tanya brings home an old friend, Redford, who Philipp instantly recognizes as a boy with whom he has had hidden sex in the past. Old feelings are aroused and Philipp runs into the night only to end up in a secretive gay bar where he meets Matthias (handsome young Dirk Kummer) invites him home, and in a beautifully captured moment has a wholly satisfying physical encounter. Both men are enraptured.

Philipp returns to Tanya who questions his evenings' whereabouts and Philipp manages to keep his secret: the relationship suffers. Philipp has meetings with his mother and during one of these meetings his mother tells him she is sure Tanya is pregnant: she has all the symptoms of morning sickness and 'a woman can tell'. Philipp, though mortified, declares he will remain with Tanya, and at a party when the couple encounters Matthias (Philipp and Matthias greet each other with passion), Philipp introduces Tanya as his wife. Matthias is shocked and hurt and flees, and outraged Tanya discards Philipp. Philipp roams the streets and parks looking for Matthias, realizing they can now be lovers, but doesn't find him. He instead encounters one of his high school students Lutz (Robert Hummel) and has a one-night stand. In a sleazy gay bar Philipp meets an old man (brilliant actor Werner Dissel) who relates how life as a gay man during Hitler's reign had resulted in incarceration in a concentration camp, that gay men will always be persecuted. Returning to his classroom Philipp is informed that he is under observation because of his sexual activity. Struck by silence, Philipp stands before his class, his future unknown.

This story by Wolfram Witt as directed by Heiner Carow is as fine as any relating the terrors of coming out. That it is performed by such a fine cast is even more impressive, and the real banner that flies over this film is that it doesn't attempt to provide answers or maudlin endings. It merely stops - leaving the futures of each of these well-drawn characters to the imagination of the audience. It is powerful, it is well made, it is worthy of continued appreciation as a brave little film from another period in time, a period that continues into the present in so many places. Highly recommended. Grady Harp