Robert Cary (Director)
Drama, USA, 2008, 1 hour, 36 minutes.
Robert Desiderio (Screenplay), Rodney Taylor (Photograph), Phillip Bartell (Editor), Jeff Cardoni (Music), Christopher Racster, Herb Hamsher, Chad Allen, Robert Gant and Judith Light (Producers).
“Save Me” is a brilliantly written, acted and directed screen play about all the people involved in an evangelical centre devoted to curing gay men of their homosexuality.
This is a topical subject in the USA where mainstream politicians openly proselytize the religious righteousness of anti-gay attitudes while an extraordinary proportion of them are themselves caught participating in sexual practices which are at the least deviant (by their own standards).
However the film deftly addresses both sides of the story in a way that links the motives of all parties involved to the pursuit of the highest forms of love. The evangelists who run the centre, the men who live there, the family members who commit their siblings and children to its care and even one father who damns his gay son to hell shortly before he expires and makes his own merry way to that destination, are all exposed as humble humans trying to do what they think is best.
Yet the film makes no excuses for its characters. It reflects the bitter divisions that exist between people who are gay and those who condemn them, but its greatest achievement is in bringing understanding to the motives of those who truly (if preposterously) believe they can cure homosexuality through a life lived in reflection of Christ. The role of the mother played with exacting fortitude by Judith Light is a moving expose of a mother’s anguish, the denouement of which is slightly reminiscent of the end of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
It’s an engaging and touching film which makes its point without risking reason through vitriol, from which emanates a droll kind of compassion for the perpetrators of the tyranny of Jesus even as the heroes, mercifully, ride off into the sunset (together).
December 2009
Drama, USA, 2008, 1 hour, 36 minutes.
Robert Desiderio (Screenplay), Rodney Taylor (Photograph), Phillip Bartell (Editor), Jeff Cardoni (Music), Christopher Racster, Herb Hamsher, Chad Allen, Robert Gant and Judith Light (Producers).
This is a topical subject in the USA where mainstream politicians openly proselytize the religious righteousness of anti-gay attitudes while an extraordinary proportion of them are themselves caught participating in sexual practices which are at the least deviant (by their own standards).
However the film deftly addresses both sides of the story in a way that links the motives of all parties involved to the pursuit of the highest forms of love. The evangelists who run the centre, the men who live there, the family members who commit their siblings and children to its care and even one father who damns his gay son to hell shortly before he expires and makes his own merry way to that destination, are all exposed as humble humans trying to do what they think is best.
Yet the film makes no excuses for its characters. It reflects the bitter divisions that exist between people who are gay and those who condemn them, but its greatest achievement is in bringing understanding to the motives of those who truly (if preposterously) believe they can cure homosexuality through a life lived in reflection of Christ. The role of the mother played with exacting fortitude by Judith Light is a moving expose of a mother’s anguish, the denouement of which is slightly reminiscent of the end of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
It’s an engaging and touching film which makes its point without risking reason through vitriol, from which emanates a droll kind of compassion for the perpetrators of the tyranny of Jesus even as the heroes, mercifully, ride off into the sunset (together).
December 2009
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