Shortbus

Director: John Cameron Mitchell

The new film by the director of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." I had been looking forward to this film for months before it arrived out here on the long benighted shores of Australia. In fact, I had already formulated a plan to get my hands on a copy should it be banned in the way that "Ken Park" was banned. Bluntly, I was planning on pirating it, and then sending the director the price of the tickets, whether I liked it or not. That is how much I was interested in seeing "Shortbus" and probably goes some way towards showing the deep and profound contempt I feel towards to Australian Film and Literature "Classification" Office.

Mind you, I figured that the chances of me actually hating the film were reasonably slight. After all, "Hedwig" was not the work of a dullard, and John Cameron Mitchell is obviously someone with something to say in this world. Better and rarer than that, he is someone worth listening to.

In case you don't know, "Shortbus" is a film about modern people dealing with sex, life and love in the post Jesus, commonsense world that some of us are lucky enough to live in. It features full on un-simulated sex, no real plot to speak of, a lot of really naturalistic actors and mellow music. It is a lot like a porno, except that the actors are actors and the ideas behind the film run rather deeper than getting the audience to masturbate. As far as that goes, the sex may be full on, and un-simulated but it didn't inspire me to want to masturbate once, it is a film about sex, but it is not a sex film. Primarily it is a tragi-comedy much like life itself and like life it is both exceptionally funny, and at other points, utterly sad. Also like life, it never fails to be engaging and deeply interesting. Above all "Shortbus" is a very good film, and does what few films actually do, simply, it engages the intellect and touches the emotions. On these two levels alone, "Shortbus" is nothing short of a major shock to the system. Any system. Well, any system with its eyes open.

"Shortbus" is quite different to "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" in that it departs from the scripted fictional autobiographical form of the first film and is instead a loosely scripted ensemble piece worked out during the production between the director and the actors as a evolutionary and organic process. As such, the film is more freeform and free-wheeling with the emphasis more on acting and character interactions than Hedwig. While this makes for a more relaxed and mellower film it also results in a film that is not as incisively reasoned and as pointed. This of course adds up to a film that is easier to watch but one that is, perhaps, somewhat less satisfying on the deeper levels of meaning and symbolism.

That said "Shortbus" is a very fine film indeed. the performances are, without exception engaging and interesting, the stories that are told are fascinating and more often than not, thoroughly funny, and there are probably more messages than contained in any fifty normal movies. "Shortbus" is fascinating stuff indeed.

If anything, aside from laughing the one thing that "Shortbus" gave me above all else was a deep and abiding kind of shock to the system. You see, I was brought up as a Catholic, and with the whole anti-sex, anti-gay guilt garbage trip that goes with it. Plowing through that and coming out happy on the far side at the ripe old age of forty plus was an ugly experience and a thorough-going waste of life that could have been spent doing other, much more fun, things. "Shortbus" made me jealous. I saw in it hints of what I might have been like had I been brought up in an atheistic commonsense environment where therapy was more common than the fairy tale prognostications of long dead sheep herders. I looked at it and thought, "I could have been happy, years ago, if I hadn't been filled up with all that bullshit."

It wasn't a new thought, but what was new was the clear representation of what that happiness might have actually looked like, or felt like, should it and all of Satan's other evils, been visited upon me. I spent a lot of "Shortbus" sort of seething with jealousy. I imagine it must make some people crazy with rage. It's that sort of film. Thank God :)

It is pretty obvious, I liked "Shortbus" a hell of a lot. I can't say that I respect it in the same way that I respect the simple multi layered near blithe genius of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" but I respect it for showing with clear eyes, what and honest, decent heaven on Earth might actually look like, a place where commonsense and humanity are paramount and bigotry, intolerant religion and simple wickedness have no grasp.

This film should be compulsory.

(C)opyright Alex Rieneck, 2007.