Queer (2024)

Queer-(2024)
Queer (2024)

In “Queer,” an innovative interpretation of William S. Burroughs’ concerning autobiographical novel, William Lee (Daniel Craig), a sulking expatriate from the USA, is currently recollecting his sexual experiences over dinner with Eugene (Drew Starkey), a young, attractive striker he met in Mexico City’s dark underbelly when he tries to discuss about how he managed to reconcile within himself his sexual longings.

Modern images of a respectable businessman would hardly conjure up the image of steely-eyed Lee, in a white linen suit, wearing a fedora, forgoing informal wear for tuxedos, and turtlenecks. The age is the 1950s, and he despite being an alcoholic and a ‘hot mess most of the time’, seems to manage himself. Lee has always been somewhat stiff in a freakish sort of way and claims to have avoided showing much interest in men due to the “curse”. A painted beautiful lady impersonator is what he would associate himself with when hearing the word “homosexual”. “Could I have been one of those subhuman things?” He almost always saw that possibility with despair and perhaps disgust. Such ideas today appear laughable, but Lee’s value system is unapologetically convoluted. In modern times, homosexual activities can either be defined as shameful or weak submissive traits. He describes himself as a very rugged person who does not associate his moral values with his actions. He found the need to move to Mexico City due to such reasons. In Mexico, deporting heron is easier than in America (due to the legal ramification that would ensue). All of his inner desires are fulfilled in Mexico, allowing him to be far more self-expressive than ever before possible.

The narrative in this section is set in Burroughs’ past specifically in the time period familiar to the author Lee. In the plot, Burroughs’ is involved in a gay relationship with the character Eugene who comes to Lee’s mind as an adoring gay man portrayed by Drew Starkey. Lee observes him for the first time when he’s on the street striking an odd pose, in wannabe chic clothing and eyeglasses, which also draw Lee’s attention by the way, while surrounded by a bunch of people staring at a cockfight. The urban fantasy scene is depicted beautifully with the Nirvana song ‘Come as You Are’ which elevates the sex appeal in the frames. Seeing this, Lee feels euphoric and sees this as such an attraction that it can be likened to divine connection. It’s easy to fall for Starkey as he is handsome, what’s striking, though, is how easily even fans would be able to gaze into the essence of a hardened and cruel demon inside him. But even when considering this type of radical change in Lee, seeing Cosmic Darling admitting that Lee had already been touched by layers of self-doubt inculcated by an oppressive culture, was a new approach for Eugene coming from the west. The vision he had fallen in love with when first getting for this project, said that there was a perfect balance within him, neither weak nor effeminate. So, in ‘Queer’, Lee looks to be several decades ahead of his era and carrying an indescribable yet intriguing energy in relation to sexuality.

In a complete departure from James Bond, Craig does not look to replicate William Burroughs as a punk icon in the 80s complete with a prescient leering gaze and a tortured dry voice. He takes a little of that glowering Burroughs DNA, but performs the easier trick of impression simply younger Burroughs (who was about 40 at the time) whom it was before he turned to write in plain sight of veneer insanity the American chaos Imaginarium of “Naked Lunch”. Craig makes him a nasty, dextrous dog scribe, witty and vulnerable at the same time. Craig makes him a disgraceful bulldog of a writer who gets drunk on tequila and quizzes that “Your generation has never learned the pleasures that a tutored palate bestows on magnificent few”. He doesn’t try to hide his abrasive soul: he is a romantic at heart. A fierce romantic, yes, but tender in love as well—he seems unyielding until he meets Eugene.

To adapt Burroughs’ slightly incomplete manuscript, which was meant to be a follow-up to ‘Junkie’ (1953) but was only issued in 1985 (it was Burrows who refrained from distributing it), perhaps since he constructed his brand while publishing naked lunch he did not want to appear so defense) Guadagnino, the beautiful director of the films ‘Challengers’ and ‘Call Me by your Name’, has a great time thanks to the screenplay of ‘Challengers’ Justin Kuritzkes. It is so easy to get immersed in the gritty parts of Mexico City that in this particular film, it resembles the sleepy 50s border town in Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil.” He fills in the picture of the community: Lee and other queer people who go to Ship Ahoy a beautiful restaurant/bar, such as Joe the Mrs. Douglas, a tubby nerdy libertine (A part played by Jason Schwartzman who is almost unrecognizable with roughed padding, a bushy beard and tortoise shell glasses), or Dumé (Drew Droege) a monstrous queen that’s also another many that spent at the green lantern the more serious looking queer bar in the area.

What exactly is Eugene doing at the Ship Ahoy? He goes out with a woman friend, Andra Ursuta, but its apparent that his attentions are in other places. Yet he has never done anything about them. Burroughs based the character of an American Navy serviceman who he met in Mexico City called Adelbert Lewis Marker, while Starkey, with his impressive clarity Augments Marker into the dream that he is. Eugene gets along with Lee who later becomes his drinking mate and through drinking, the American finds out that Lee wants more than just friendship. The seduction that happens is quite strappy and believable as Lee, who is both a white knight and a small predatory claw, manages to entice Eugene out of his comfort area and into a more queer oriented one. The first scene when they have some sex is violent, calm, sweet and jerks off into a vibrating passion. The second scene was iconic to Eugene since it was the first time that he allowed himself to be fully possessed.

In its first half, “Queer” is a vibrant camp comedy about freedom, punctuated by a slightly disjointed mixed bag of music, which includes Nirvana, Prince, and New Order. Lee, who refers to himself as an independent man, as he comes from family wealth, has no qualms over his life, of wastefulness and pleasures, of seeking and indulging in vices. The queer culture of Mexico City that we observe is simultaneously filthy and fricking utopia. The men tell each other stories about their spies and bitterness and aimless anger pass for friendship and camaraderie. There is also the fact that Lee grabbed a young Mexican, the gap-toothed Omar Apollo, who played the part, and together with the actress toyed idly with his bronze caterpillar necklace, as if this was something quite colonial.

Although Lee and Eugene share a bed, they hesitate to call themselves a couple. Eugene speaks of wanting “independence”, and to him this means deciding each day not to ‘bequeath’ himself to a word like queer. (One of those men who’s like: Maybe I’m just testing it out.) And that is the main reason that Lee starts his other pursuit from which he has become equally obsessed traveling to South America to find Yage (pronounced yah-hey), a plant in the Ecuadorian jungles that claimed to possess telepathic powers. Lee is colonized by this obsession for a reason that is ribald but paradoxically sad. It is perhaps the darkest point of the book where Lee has started with his rants about Yage sustaining the Russians, and in turn the CIA, in conducting mind control tests. For the first time, he faintly resembles Burroughs the larger than life paranoid sufferer of Naked Lunch – a book published in 1959. However, it’s also the case that Lee is deluded by telepathy as to which he honestly believes will bear him the power to control people like Eugene. This is the reason why he insists Eugene on joining him to the jungles.

Towards the end, however the film shifts into a slightly more comedic, surrealist outlook as they go on a cross-country trek trying to get high. It loses some of its rhythm and wonder and begins to wander. In the book, Lee indeed went into the jungle but till the end, he didn’t find Yage. Guadagnino, on the other hand, processing his own version of the Burroughs mythology, wants Lee to find what he wants. Lee and Eugene then go through the jungle and reach an American botanist, Dr. Cotter, who has lived there forever, surrounded by snakes and plants, and “was doing research.” Manville, who plays Cotter, is hardly recognizable with greasy black hair and dirty teeth. She welcomes them into her home and along with them, they prepare Yage, which triggers a beautifully whimsical delirious portion of the movie. The narrative of the film that we believed we were watching suggests itself to a dramatic halt.

Even as ‘Queer’ settles down into a certain languor, and even as this sequence is brazen and self-indulgent, it is also something of a consummation of the film’s & their vision of William Burroughs and queer love. It is telepathic. And what Lee learns is that Eugene will never in his life regard himself as a queer, even as their bodies are quite literally becoming one. This may be the reason why the last third of the “Queer” is likely to be difficult — difficult to comprehend for the average viewer, that is, far more than the depicted eroticism of the film. Still, Luca Guadagino is narrating what is fundamentally the same narrative that he has also narrated in the film ‘Call me by your name’, a story of a queer love that does not nourish the spirit but rather gulps it, when it encounters reality like. The final scene of the film is remarkable. It shows that you after everything, the drugs, the weird crusades, the queerness he had, the one question William Burroughs never answered was how to mend a broken heart.

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