Love Is Strange, which opens in Chicago this Friday, Aug. 29, has been receiving critical acclaim since its Sundance debut early this year.
It's the story of Ben and George, two elderly gay men whose 39 years together are put to the test after they marry and lose their Manhattan apartment—thanks to George losing his job at a Catholic school. The openly gay director Ira Sachs, who co-wrote the script with Mauricio Zacharias, was inspired by real-life mentors. The acclaimed actors John Lithgow and Alfred Molina have the movie roles of a lifetime as, respectively, Ben and George ( see my review this issue ) and the film—a gentle, bittersweet love story with many other themes woven in—is one of the year's best.
Sachs, 48, was in Chicago for a screening of the film. ( One of the movie's producers is Joe Della Monica, private wealth advisor, owner of an independent Ameriprise Financial practice * and a board member of the Center on Halsted ). Windy City Times sat down with Sachs to discuss Love Is Strange and later spoke with Molina about the film as well.
Windy City Times: So much of the movie happens between the lines, it has the subtlety of those small but important moments—that could have been an alternate title even. I love the emphasis on subtlety.
Ira Sachs: I hope to be a subtle, sophisticated storyteller that doesn't assume that the audience can't catch up to life. Really, you want to give an audience everything they need and then disappear at the same time so that the connection is not between the audience and the filmmaker but the audience and the characters.
WCT: As a gay man I love calling this a "gay movie," but I know that can also be a pejorative. I embrace that but I think it's more than that.
IS: I run a film series called "Queer Film," I run a mentorship program called "Queer Mentorship," and I'm interested in how these terms are useful and necessary in cultural building. There was something I read about Ozu [the Japanese filmmaker]. When his films were made they didn't show in America because they were too Japanese. To limit a story based on its adjective is something that I'm not interested in doing and it's not how I approached the film. We're many thousands of things besides and including our sexuality.
WCT: Right, but it's good for me to claim this and say, "I'm so proud that this man of my community made this so the rest of the world can see it."
IS: Yes, I would agree with that. It is certainly one of the ways you could describe the film.
WCT: I love all the generational relationships in the film—especially, having been the wacky, artsy gay uncle to many nieces and nephews—the one between Ben ( John Lithgow ) and his nephew played by Charlie Tahan—who is marvelous, by the way—really resonated.
IS: I feel like I've discovered the next Leonardo DiCaprio [laughs]—he's incredible. My great-uncle was gay and had a partner for 45 years, and I remember the moment that I realized that they were gay. One was a lawyer and one was the head of the art college; I was very close to my great-uncle's partner Ted, who died in 1999, and Ted was working on his last piece, [an unfinished] sculpture of a teenager with a backpack. That was really the inspiration for much of the film—that object and what it said about creative passion and youth and age. It's inspiring to watch these older artists just hitting their prime. There's a lot of this movie in it.
WCT: George getting fired from his job teaching music at a Catholic school is straight out of the headlines. It's going to be hard for some to understand why they don't fight back but that just seems to me typical of that older generation.
IS: I'm glad you picked up on that because that's just not these guys. I'm not sure why and I find that very interesting. What these two men have and what I see in a lot of people of their generation is this humility that also comes from being working people. Alfred ( Molina ) comes from an immigrant family in London and I think he shares that with George. He's not going to make a fuss and yet from that very first scene you know that he's going to be himself and that's quite powerful.
Alfred Molina now talks about Love Is Strange.
WCT: Obviously George is a great role, but is part of the appeal of such a role like this because we don't see characters like this very often in the movies?
Alfred Molina: Absolutely. It is a great role and I responded to it immediately when I read it; I loved it. Despite the fact that I'm not gay I found so much in George that I could relate to—his sensibilities, his prejudices, the fact that he's a little bit persnickety, has a certain order in his life. All of those things were very resonant for me and, of course, the fact that, as you say, you very rarely see stories about relationships at this end of the age spectrum—particularly when it's a gay couple.
Those stories are usually reserved for men and women who are in the prime of their beauty, when they're young and they're striving to find each other and their relationship, their place in the world and so on. And there is usually some terrible political or cultural crisis that affects them both whereas here you have two men in their late middle age who have lived a very anonymous life.
WCT: I understand you and John Lithgow didn't have a lot of rehearsal…
AM: We did not, but I'd hate for you to think we weren't prepared.
WCT: No, no, no—obviously, you did prepare but I wonder how much was instinctual and how much was planned. Because literally from that first shot of the two of you in bed, we know those characters.
AM: I think our friendship off screen didn't hurt. Bit like chicken soup—can't do any harm. But also because the script was so finished and polished. All the little details that you notice in the film; the little behavioral details that happen in the movie are all in the stage directions. Things like, I get out of bed and do my tie in the mirror and Ben walks past me and I throw him a little smile—that's in the script. When he said, "I can't find my glasses, where are my glasses" and I whisper under my breath, "Oh God, not today please." That's all indicated and prescribed in the script. It's fantastic to have that. Even in the silences Ira and Mauricio had written these incredibly eloquent moments. That's why I really believe that this movie qualifies as a work of art.
WCT: The relationship between John Lithgow's character and his nephew is central but also, being a musician myself, I really caught the scene with your young piano student and the importance of artistic mentors is so beautifully done. Can you talk about that for a moment?
AM: I had two very influential teachers in my life—both of which were at what you would call high school. I had a teacher who was the first person who took me seriously at when I said at the age of 9 or 10 that I wanted to be an actor. I remember he said, "I'll help you in every way I can but the minute you drop the ball I'm washing my hands of you."
[This] sounds a little harsh but it's the best lesson he could have taught me. I didn't drop the ball and neither did he. He took a great deal of interest in me up until I graduated at 18; he looked after me and gave me some great examples of what it means to be committed to something, to be devoted and dedicated to something.
I think the film itself is a lesson in that ( when we look at the title Love Is Strange ) if you think of the word "strange" in the Shakespearian sense of being something magical and mystical and unexplainable, beyond logic and reason, something that hits you in a way that you can't quantify or explain—then love in its forms is in the movie. Love of people, love of place, work and so on. There's a small example when I am giving the little girl her piano lesson and the character goes off on a little reverie and comes back, realizing that no matter what's happening in his own life, he can't dilute that. Love of partnerships.
I think it's a beautiful message because it's a universal one—whether you're gay or straight, we all love in the same way. Love is love—regardless of who or why or who loves you. Gay men and women fall in just the same as anyone else and suffer for it and revel in it and are uplifted by it and are crushed by it just as much as anybody else.
www.sonyclassics.com/loveisstrange/ .
*In an earlier version of this story, Joe Della Monica's job was listed incorrectly. He is a private wealth advisor and owns an independent Ameriprise Financial practice in Lakeview.
