mcman

I watch this show to be entertained, to laugh a lot, to oggle, to

ponder, to cry a bit. I also watch it because I yearn to see stories

told that speak to me of my life. Straight love stories go a fair way

but in the end can't reproduce the nuances, the flavour that comes

from the interaction of characters living in contemporary gay life.

But that alone isn't enough: I also want good production values,

good acting, credible writing and sufficient plot choices, conflicts or

dilemmas to make it worthwhile to come back week after week. Queer As Folk does all of that for me.

I enjoyed this film. Most of my reasons for doing so have been

canvassed by other reviewers, so I'd like to add a few observations

of my own that I haven't read elsewhere.

Firstly, this didn't seem to me to be a film specifically about the

Vietnam War, though it is anti-war in the final analysis. I saw this

film as being about the brutalising at home of decent young men

by our military so as to create efficient, disciplined & uniformed

killers. The setting is 1971, but we it might just as well be 1941 or

2001, just as much a preface to "Saving Private Ryan" or "Black

Hawk Down". Several of the characters in this ensemble piece do

not make it through the training; some manage to find the legal

means to opt out, while others are terminally warped by the vision

of cold humanity taught by their trainers.

Secondly, it seems to me to be also a film about the survival of

humane spirit despite this process. The lead character, Bozz,

knows how to escape, legally or otherwise, but he discovers a

reason for staying that has nothing to do with any flag-waving

notion of glory; but rather to share with and not shirk from whatever

might happen to his comrades, his fellow trainees.

Thirdly, the cast lacks a high-profile lead and this helps avoid any

of the characters being imbued with a star actor's personality.

This helps the film achieve its aim of allowing us to look

disinterestedly at this diverse group of young men, and observe

the different ways they react to training. The even distribution of so

many roles (as in "Black Hawk Down" or "Gosford Park" or

"Amelie"), incidentally, will hopefully help dispel Hollywood

scriptwriter William Goldman's strange theory that there can't be

more than 6 chief characters in any good script.

Fourthly, and finally, it intrigues me to see yet another example of a

non-native actor playing a character from another culture. Colin

Farrell possesses a George Clooney-like half-charm, half-cheekiness about him that endears him to the audience,

although I'm not sure how good a Texan identity his performance

might be. I don't doubt the talent and brilliance of Englishmen like

Tim Roth and Gary Oldman playing Americans, or Americans like

Renee Zellwegger and Julianne Moore playing Brits, or Australian

Cate Blanchett playing both, and similarly, Colin Farrell here; but

are we seeing the internationalising of character performances in

this most international of artforms? How differently would an

American actor such as Matthew McConaughey, for instance,

have handled the scene in the mess kitchen? The sense of locale

that was significant in "Fargo" or "The Straight Story" can be lost by

a different casting choice. Every character "lives" in a specific place

and for an actor to take us, the audience, there needs more than

just a good accent.

There's a lot to admire here: good camerawork, fine acting. But the

film was for me a disappointment, with an unsatisfying middle

bookended between an arresting beginning and a chilling and

bloody ending.

Here we have 3 young characters, who share an apartment and

who have graduated with honours from the Seinfeld School of

moral behaviour, who take the opportunity presented to them to

enrich themselves with someone else's bounty. The triangular

household begins to unravel as the stolen money and what they

do to conceal their theft of it effects each of them and how they

regard each other.

Director Danny Boyle is very good at creating an almost

claustrophobic atmosphere between the three leads, very well

played by Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox and Ewan McGregor.

But this middle section of the film, which feels almost like a piece

written for theatre with its theatrically sized apartment filmed

heavily around its centre-stage front door, ultimately lets the film

down. Unlike "A Simple Plan" (mentioned by other reviewers), I

never felt these three to be trapped in their characters, and that

they were responding to the unfolding events with inevitability.

Rather it felt to me as if sufficient screen time had elapsed and it

was time to give the audience a climactic jolt. And a fine jolt it is,

too, worthy of the film's beginning, but not sufficiently connected to

what has been happening in-between. A pity.