Christopher and His Kind – 2011 LAFF

After the North American premiere of Christopher And His Kind, director Geoffrey Sax talked about how the film was originally written and shot as a BBC miniseries, not a feature film, which meant that over half of the footage – and story – got left on the editing room floor (so to speak). Knowing this now explains why the film, while populated with solid actors and performances, had a feeling of a made-for-TV movie.

Granted, a well-made made-for-TV movie, as the filmmakers did a good job cutting it down to what ended up being a standalone feature. Watching it, you didn’t get the feeling that you were missing out on anything that made the storyline not make sense; even though it was evident that a ton more had to have been happening off screen. So, if it wasn’t the structure or the acting that kept it from elevating above the level of harmless TV movie, what was it?

Gravitas. Well, the lack thereof, actually. Christopher And His Kind is based on the memoirs of author Christopher Isherwood, a gay Brit, who goes to Berlin in the early 1930s to be a part of the growing gay community there. (His novel A Single Man is considered one of the first – and best – novels about the modern gay liberation movement, having been adapted into a movie in 2009 by Tom Ford.) While there, he ends up falling in love with a German man named Heinz, leading both to have to deal with the rising Nazi party. 

The lack of gravitas occurs in both facets of the film: the love story never feels strong enough to drive the story’s engine through the second half of the film where Chris tries to get Heinz out of Germany to escape the Nazi regime, making both efforts entertaining enough but not all that deep and moving. It also felt like we’d seen it before – both the gay awakening aspect and the escape from Germany part – and done much better. Perhaps the lack of stakes occurred because the beats in the original script had been spaced out differently for the miniseries. Either way, Chris came off a bit cold in the film, able to move on from his relationships fairly quickly when those special people in his life leave. So, if he’s not all that torn up when lovers and friends pass through, why should we?

That said, the exploits on screen did their best to portray what actually happened to Chris, as the film had Chris’s real-life, long-time partner Don Bachardy as a consultant. Both he and Sax were at the screening where he gave the film Chris’s posthumous approval, which is something I’m sure many filmmakers doing biopics would appreciate hearing from their subjects. Even though approval is much less important from the people being portrayed than by those watching the film.