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 Still from A Very Natural Thing
To consider the first question perhaps it is necessary to contextualise the film. It is set on the brink of the first full scale gay pride march in New York in the early seventies and references a very specific time in gay culture. It is set just after the Stonewall riots and even more importantly just before the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, later to be labelled the gay plague. For director, Christopher Larkin, New York provides the perfect backdrop for his story to unfold. Mixing documentary footage of the famous Baths and of Fire Island also, as well as footage from the Gay Pride Rally on Seventh Avenue in New York, the film certainly stands as evidence for a very different era in the gay rights movement.
The historical context of the film’s narrative is useful in gauging if nothing more, just how far we have come in reaching true liberation. Yes, there are still things to be done and battles to fight, however when watching A Very Natural Thing it becomes apparent just how modern the gay rights movement is. Obviously there is something of a shadow cast over the film with the knowledge that we have as spectator, we know that the elation on the faces of those interviewed and the declarations of pride given throughout the film’s discourse are tinged by the destructive force of the ‘gay plague’ which signalled a dramatic step backwards in gay liberation. However, to get lost merely in the history of gay liberation depicted in the film is to miss the point.
Here is a film that also deals in the complexities of relationships. In what now seems to be perfect dramatic irony, David speaks constantly of his marriage to Mark, something that although now possible by law in certain American states, at the time was a distant hope for the future. Larkin manages to capture on film a relationship that suffers nothing more than the fickle nature of love, at once passionate and fulfilling, ultimately dangerous and destructive. This is a love that is imagined and then realised beautifully, never compared to but always equal with the conventions of heterosexual marriage.
The audience are given the position of voyeur on David and Mark’s relationship, not only do we see the beginning of the relationship through photographic montage, but we also witness in graphic detail the most intimate of moments, from scenes of sex all the way down to their getting ready for work in the morning. It is easy to forget also just how shocking this film is when placed in its socio – historical context. Here is a film that aggrandises gay love, as ordinary and normal but also puts gay sex in all its guises onto celluloid. When Mark suggests that they get themselves out of the ‘rut’ they have fallen into, the pair head off to Fire Island, synonymous with sexual deviance and the free love of the seventies.
Sex in the film is seen as a proof of love; Mark uses sex to ease his guilt for sleeping with a rent boy and when David refuses because he is ‘too sore’ the sex comes to represent pain also. Furthermore, later in the film when David and Mark have separated, it is David’s friend Alan who suggests he visit the baths to get his mind off of things. What does this metaphor, sex as love, sex as pain, add to the film? It is fair to see that Larkin tries to embroil sexual desire as a motivational force in David and Mark’s relationship, when this is eroded over time due to their living together the relationship falters. No more eloquently is this put than by David himself when he refuses Jason’s offer at the end of the film to move in with him, not wanting to ruin things by moving in together and allowing wanting to turn into having to see each other.
How relevant is the film for a contemporary audience, for a youth audience in fact? Well, simply as a piece of docu-drama the film will appeal to all of those seeking to understand just where the gay rights movement came from. It will also frame some of the context for the issues we are still fighting and lend support to the intolerance faced by those gay men of three decades ago. The film also bravely tackles examining the gay relationship and here is its ultimate strength. A Very Natural Thing does not try to apologise for gay relationships, does not herald them as different or deviant, does not even attempt to justify them, it merely attempts to document them. It is this that makes for the humour in a scene set on a ferris wheel, when Mark asks David back to his flat to ‘suck his cock’ even though they are separated. Yes this is there to shock, yes it succeeds in shocking but it also offers a true window into the complexities of relationships, in their successes, their failures and their unhappy resolutions, their desires, their dangers and their destruction. Only registered users can write comments.
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