Stonewall

Government action against homosexuals leads to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in NYC. Danny Winters is a runaway from Indiana. He is befriended by Ray and his group of gay friends. They struggle to find a place in the world.

Everybody is played over the top including the flat doe-eyed Danny. There is only so many Danny jaw drops that I can take. It's overwrought at almost every point. I want to say it's unflinching but it's more like pulp fiction. There are hints of artificiality which are the flat notes of this historical drama. The struggles of the fictional Danny Winters in his home town could be a compelling story by itself. Roland Emmerich's insistence of tying it to the Stonewall Riots is questionable. It's like saying the history cannot be comprehended without a white middle America protagonist. Ray is a more compelling character. The plot is also overstuffed which sidetracks the story and drags the pacing. This is problematic especially considering the needs of this important history.

Greetings again from the darkness. Dramatized versions of real life events are always a bit tricky, and hindsight often proves it's best left to the documentary format. However, sometimes, a dramatized version helps us more easily relate to, and empathize with, those who were involved. That seems to be the approach taken by director Roland Emmerich in his re-telling of events so important to him and the LGBT movement … the Stonewall Riots of 1969.

The Stonewall Riots of June 1969 are often cited as the beginning of the Gay Liberation movement. Of course, there had been many previous clashes between gays and police, as discrimination was so extreme that these folks were labeled as mentally ill, and it was actually unlawful for gays to be hired for many jobs. On the streets of many big cities there existed a melting pot of minorities and the LGBT community. Many were young and homeless, and did whatever necessary to survive. So how best to tell this story? Director Emmerich and writer Jon Robin Baitz put blonde, white, Midwestern, pretty boy Danny (Jeremy Irvine, War Horse) front and center. How insulting to those involved.

To his credit, Emmerich does cast actors of various races to many roles, and he does seem to treat this as a sincere tribute or homage to those street kids who finally pushed back. Unfortunately, it's these characters that seem to be the drag on the story. Despite such names as Queen Cong, Little Orphan Annie, Quiet Paul, and the inclusion of real life activists as Marsha P Johnson (Otoja Abit), Bob Kohler (Patrick Garrow) … and other key players like Ed Murphy (Ron Perlman) and Deputy Seymour Pine (Matt Craven) … the film comes off more like a staged musical sans music. The closest thing to a real character is Ray, played with aplomb by Jonny Beauchamp ("Penny Dreadful").

Having the Columbia University-bound pretty white boy as the focus might make it easier for mainstream audiences to connect, but it skims over the real struggles going on at the time. We see Danny at home with his worried mother, observant little sister (Joey King), and macho football coach/father (David Gubitt). Everyone is uncomfortable over what is not being said, and the breaking point occurs when a tryst with the star quarterback becomes public knowledge. Just like that, Danny is booted from home (Indiana, not Kansas) and lands on the streets of New York. The comparisons to Dorothy (gay icon Judy Garland) and the Land of Oz are obvious, and repeated numerous times for those a bit slow on the take.

Christopher Street and the Stonewall Inn are the main settings. The mob involvement is noted, as is the desperation of the community, the use of flop houses, and the long-standing "quiet" demonstrations. Even the practice of gays trying to "fit in" to society – to prove they belong – by wearing suits and acting "normal" is addressed. The riots are reduced to a single evening in the movie, and of course, the pretty white boy gets to toss the first brick. As a 'roots of the movement' film, it's hard to believe this film won't create more anger and frustration than thanks and awareness. Fortunately, there are many exceptional books and yes, documentaries that provide a better perspective on the events that occurred more than 45 years ago. We do see the first Gay Liberation Parade held the following year in honor of the riots – a tradition that continues today. The closing credit sequence catches us up on the key activists, and even provides a startling statistic: 40% of today's homeless youth are LGBT.

The film is derivative, as well as whitewashed.

There are so many factual goofs, when it comes to clothes, music, etc. The filmmaker needed to spend some time doing research and fact checking.

I also find fault with the film centering around a kid from Kansas. The uprising was started by Puerto Rican and African American drag queens, and there is strong support that the first police resistance was by a lesbian, not some white football player from the mid-west.

I suggest watching the British 1997 film, which really feels so much more authentic.

Were it not for Jon Robin Baitz 'Stonewall' would be a less interesting film. His script is narrow focus: the three months leading up to the 'rebellion' at the Stonewall bar on Christopher Street in New York's Greenwich Village. Roland Emmerich use his camera to capture the nights and days of those 90 days that gave rise to Gay Liberation, as seen through the least and most vulnerable of homosexuals--the drag queens, the bum boys and the homeless who risk life and limb by living on the street, and who are at the mercy of the mafia that own the Stonewall and the corrupt police who they pay for 'protection' or whose billy clubs bruise them or the Black Maria that haul them off to prison. Is it by chance that 'Stonewall' opens during Pope Francis' visit to New York? The Roman pontiff came with a message of love the least among us, even the homosexual. What is missing is the context of a US in the throes of 'revolutionary' turmoil in a mass movement against the war in Vietnam and the rise of the Black Panthers, a 'revolutionary' movement of liberation that proved to be an example for a revolt from below. Emmerich's camera recreate the cruising world of the piers, the bars and off screen the death that awaits the rent boys from predators. Baitz slights the Mattachine Society who labored in the years before the ferment of the 1960s for equal rights for homosexuals by peaceful means. He's got it right that the younger homosexuals rebelled on 28 June 1969 at Stonewall, and more to the point, it was the 'despised' drag queens who confronted the police and openly resisted the police, resulting in three days of rage and rebellion that gave rise to Gay Power. He's got it wrong in saying that the drag queens, in the person of Ray, based on the ironic Sylvia Rivera, had no political consciousness, but rose up in a having it had it sense of frustration. Rivera later was a simple member of the Young Lords, an activist group of Peurto Rican nationalists, modeled on the Panthers. 'Stonewall's hook is a young Johnny Appleseed from Indiana thrown out by his father for being gay. Ray adopts Danny Winter and brings into life on the streets. There are a class angle to this since Danny will go to Columbia as a scholarship, thereby escaping the streets, yet firmly gay and proud of his 'sister' Ray and her friends. There is a minor frisson of tension in Danny's kidnap and delivery to a predator who made us strangely think of J. Edgar Hoover, grotesquely tarted up in drag.

I was not previously aware of the negative reviews of this film. And that is a good thing, since they might have deterred me from watching. Having now seen the film, and having done so as A) someone who is old enough to remember firsthand what it was like to be gay in middle America in 1969 (far worse than what is depicted in this film!), B) someone who was disowned and thrown out by his parents at age 17 for being gay, C) a long-time gay activist, and D) a professional historian, all I can say is that the critics need to get past the fact that this is *not* a dispassionate, objective documentary about the Stonewall Riots. Rather, it is a fictionalized evocation of the social, cultural, and political circumstances that eventually triggered the riots. And in that regard, I think the film did an outstanding job. Those born after about 1970 largely have no reason to remember bar raids, police payoffs, anti-cross-dressing laws, or even the overt involvement of organized crime in the operation of many gay bars. And that is in large part thanks to the bravery of the "deplorables" (to use a word circulating in this election cycle) who finally said, "Enough is enough." From my perspective as an elderly gay man who continues to be utterly dumbfounded (and delighted!) by the social changes that gay militants have achieved over the past half-century, I can only say "Thank you" to the makers of this film for at least trying to tell the story in a passionate, subjective manner. If you want cold, emotionless history, tune in to the National Geographical Channel. If you want some sense of what it *felt like* in 1969 (and for many years thereafter), see this film. Is the film "flawless"? No. But despite a few flaws, it is an excellent film.