Chris & Don: A Love Story

It looks like we will finally be able to watch this masterpiece documentary in theaters as distributor Zeitgeist has picked up the Miami Festival winner for a limited release. Produced by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, a team of longtime documentary authors whose "Mandala" revealed a few years ago a very sophisticated talent in visual storytelling, "Chris & Don" is the love story between famous playwright Christopher Isherwood and artist Don Bachardy in the golden years of Hollywood, with exclusive interviews and footage with actors and other personalities. Although Isherwood and Bachardy's was a homosexual love during a time when these relationships were looked at with criticism even in the more liberal California, the movie is somehow capable of setting the sexual factor aside and focus instead on the depth of the protagonists' personality. By the end of the movie you feel so intimate with both, that it is almost natural to want to know more about them and their art. A refined, well directed portrait and an opportunity for exemplary film-making that should easily captivate audiences.

Portrait artist Don Bachardy, still active in his seventies, reflects on his 30-year love affair with British writer Christopher Isherwood, who was 30 years Bachardy's senior. Meeting in early-1950s Southern California, the bright-eyed, star-worshiping young man and the immigrated author-turned-screenwriter seemed to have little in common, yet their attraction and devotion to one another proved all their naysayers wrong. Although intriguing as both a microcosm of homosexuality in the '50s (and the ways in which it was greeted by the heterosexual community) as well as an enduring love story, this exquisite documentary also touches tenderly on age, on talent, on family and friends, and on reflections of the past from a still-sharp and brilliant mind. Bachardy is a colorful character, a sweet and sentimental fellow, and his thoughts are heightened visually by wonderful home movies of his journey with Isherwood, days both blissful and turbulent. Michael York narrates succinctly from the diaries Isherwood kept from 1939-1960, and several celebrities and biographers recount their experiences in knowing or researching the two men. This is as complete and satisfying a documented memoir as you're likely to see. It's also an extraordinarily moving testament to the human condition. ***1/2 from ****

What is love? And how does it exercise us? As, regardless of age or experience, we grope, or dance, or trot, or what you will, our way in life, is there not at some point, for some of us, a deep impact encounter with another person that challenges our expectations, our fears, even our love? Let alone the fact that, for example, a friend's fleeting remark can trigger an unpleasant memory. That much for frailty, for I do not want to deliver any kind of portentous philosophical or psychoanalytic sketch as a response to the film, but there was one thing, one thing if you may, that touched me profoundly, and although it shows, I think, an immense refinement and spontaneity of affect, it is of the simplest logical necessity!

First things first! you may say, if you still read this.

Like, this is a documentary concerning two men, two artists, in love, in a relationship for more than thirty years, along with geography, exile, backgrounds, celebrities, chronology, hilarity, love and its discontents making for a (dual) portrait.

Like Chris Isherwood, a somewhat canonical writer, mostly for his Berlin stories, living the 20th century passion in an insouciant pre-fascist Germany, ends up in Hollywwod, California coming from rural upper-class England, and, past middle age, he encounters a charming adolescent who ends up the love of his life. A worthy artist, also.

Like all that this entails, what is influence, what are the stakes, of youth coming into age, into art, jealousy, manhood, disgust for mushrooms (and even worse, where this, combined with canned breakfast, can lead to!), shock treatment, and what is the use of a horse being with a cat, along other matters.

Or even why love is as rare as guts. I felt my saliva freeze in my neck and tears at the back of my eye-bulbs, when Don Bachardy raised to the camera the first drawing of Isherwood's dead head.

Or why love is as frequent as ideology. If one bothers about the same sex marriage issue, thumbs up or down, mildly or not, that is if such a story can trigger a political, ideological statement or pronouncement, then one should bother also for re-balancing the debt towards people shock-treated. Recall how a broken, elderly Ted, Don Bachardy's brother, comes just a couple of minutes after the sly editing of his former, radiant and handsome self. And, even more sobering, how his brother's voice says, in a tone hurt, with all the could-have-beens of a life muffled, and still matter of fact: the shock treatment ruined his life.

But as this, too, begins to smell of ideology, I turn to what, how shall I put it, elevates to a higher degree the linear, ideological, biographical data of the film.

The day Chris Isherwood died, Don Bachardy commenced reading his diaries backwards. He wanted to reach back to their meeting. Now, for me, if there ever was an effective and affective definition of Jean Baudrillard's awkward phrase "Things get their full meaning when played backwards", this is the case!

To make first things last, a true, a truly meaningful act of love!

Like a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, namely her last one, simply and aptly called "Poem". I would like to quote it in extent:

(...) Our visions coincided - "visions" is

too serious a word - our looks, two looks:

art copying from life and life itself,

life and the memory of it so compressed

they've turned into each other. Which is which?

Life and the memory of it cramped,

dim, on a piece of Bristol board,

dim, but how live, how touching in detail

• the little that we get for free,

the little of our earthly trust. Not much. (...)

Thank you.

I know nothing, before see this documentary, about this relation. But it was not so surprising remembering the novel A Single Man and its adaptation by Tom Ford.

A provocative love story between two men defined by 30 years age difference. This is the premise and it works very little because, scene by scene, in the embroidery of Don Bachardy memories, grace to wisdome of directors and words of guests, footage and the precise- profound inspired definition of levels of relation and biography of both, , the eccentric, presumed , romance , forbbiden, easy to blame, becomes only a beautiful portrait of friendship, education, decisions, crisis , noble decision in tough moment, affection, relation with its ordinary ingredients and image of a form, not so original, of happiness. And, I admitt, scene by scene, myself I was falling in love for Don Bachardy.

At the end, touching works not as the worst word to define this long term relation, impling education, affection, comradery and define of life together.

This documentary covers a lot of ground: sexuality, aging, death, spirituality, art, literature, war, celebrity, alternative life styles, tragedy, mental health, drug use…and love. Pure and simple love.

Now I went to this movie reluctantly. The subject matter of the lives of the famous has worn—if not all of us—me down with the 24 hour news cycle. Christopher Isherwood's literary contributions were more a bridge than, say, the works of W.H. Auden which stand alone in any age. To unveil, posthumously, his private life examining the testament of his living lover, I was braced for something like testimony contesting Rock Hudson's estate.

But, I was very wrong.

Whether you can sit and hear the word "queer" and flinch or not (in any of its incantations either pejorative or defiance), it quickly doesn't matter. There is such a wealth of first hand material (photos, film footage, paintings, drawings, interviews) we don't have time to judge (as I was prepared to do) the age difference of the two subjects or their lifestyles.

Whatever the staying power of Isherwood's written words, his legacy as a gentle human being is forever preserved in this film. And whether or not Don Bachardy was "abused" by an older man or not, we're so dazzled—as the young Bachardy must have been—by the world he's invited into with Isherwood, we don't have time to sit in judgment of anyone. And that's a good thing, because at the end of the day, and at the end of this film—as at the end of these people's lives—it's for them to say whether their story was one of fulfilled love or something pathological. And what is revealed here by both the diaries of Christopher Isherwood and the loving testimony of his partner cannot be denied.

I had some quibbles with the choices made by the filmmakers, however. The use of animation seems like unnecessary padding. Only once (during a rough period in the relationship) is it well used, and the score is patchy. When jazz from the period is used it matches what we see on screen; but the original music seems generic. My biggest objection was using actors to stage some crucial events. There is such a wealth of archival footage that I began to doubt which was real and what was staged. I think using actors sells everyone--including the audience--short. What the principals have to say is so powerful, we didn't need what has become an almost obligatory trend in documentary films.

The interviews are all carefully chosen and never intrude into anything we'd call inappropriate or salacious. And the central character here, Don Bacarady, is allowed the freedom to say what he wants (most of it very funny) and he holds little back.

It's a great love story, and it's told at a time when our Country is considering whether or not it should sanction same sex marriage. Well, there's nothing here that would point towards not doing that. Yet no one on the screen has an agenda or an ax to grind. I think it was during an interview with Leslie Caron when she remembers something Isherwood says—he delays his death because "Don isn't ready"—that I realized this was no ordinary love story, it was a true love story. And it's heartbreaking and a mind-opener. Go see it.