Saturday 17 January 2015

W Imie




Though my Polish works only in retrograde (I understand it if I think back on what was said), they really don't talk much in this flick and still it is oddly compelling. Beautifully filmed. And quiet. I like that. (Don't like noisy films.) I can't say I understood most of it, at least past the "pretty boys touching" bit - it follows the similar predicament that The Priest (1994) did, adding another layer. In the Priest, Linus Roache's characters falls in lust with Carlyle's character and they're caught and that's a whole scandal. But in the early nineties priests being gay was some terrible truth, whereas meanwhile, twenty years later, a far more terrible truth is not that many were gay but that many were pedophile rapists. So, now we have a movie with the same storyline, only the poor sod not only falls in lust with another man, that man is a boy in his 'troubled youths' workshop. It really doesn't get any less comfortable than that. Nobody rapes anyone, but it's still nasty.

Let me work out some pros and cons on the subject of a priest porking a teen.
CONS
First of all, troubled youths - youths in general - are very impressionable. They lust after authority. There is a reason why an adult shouldn't take advantage of that, no matter how adorable they are.
Troubled youths will go for their 'rescuers', social workers, counselors, etc... all the time. Also, they hump one another all the time. Someone should really tell them that being a teenager simply means you're going to (try to) hump everything that throws a shadow and that is hardly a reason to kill yourself. They're called hormones. It's how a species perseveres.
The man is a priest. As far as I can tell, not The Church of England. So, no sex. Stick with one fucking vow, man. Isn't it supposed to be like marriage?
Having such a relationship really unsettles the community, especially if it's half closeted. 

PROS
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay.
Two (more or less) adult men have the right to do anything they may ever want together, because 90% of a relationship is a lot more interesting than humping.
Not all love is based on fucking. Sometimes you can truly love a bunch of non-relatives, just because you're a nice person and want to help them. You can feel protective and possessive over several people you happen not to want to hump.
Just because something is tempting, doesn't mean it's evil. It also doesn't mean it will ever be anything more than a pleasant fantasy. People like pretty things. Everyone likes several things. It is not a reason to destroy everything else. People are allowed some sense of privacy.

Bottom line ... Being very good at being a priest and helping troubled young men, but at the same time being lonely is the mother of all bitches. 

I have no idea how to get out of that one. As far as I could tell, it ended with the young mute scarred pyromaniac also becoming a priest, though I don't understand what reason he had for that logic. Wouldn't it make more sense for the other guy to step out of the cloth, live with his lover and establish a community center as an openly gay man? In a relationship?

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