Knight at the Movies: Grace is Gone, DVD Notes - 4040 - Gay Lesbian Bi Trans News

The flood of war-centered pictures this year hasn't elicited much success with audiences—either at the box office or emotionally. And critically, these pictures—Lions for the Lambs, Rendition, etc.—have not been hailed. But two—In the Valley of Elah and, now, Grace is Gone—are the hopeful exceptions to those rules. In the former, Tommy Lee Jones methodically, with the aid of police detective Charlize Theron, endeavors to find out who murdered his son, who just returned from Iraq but was still serving in the Army. The disturbing resolve to the story, though heavy-handed at times, offers insight into the psychological costs of this particular war for both fervent warmongers and anti-war factions alike. Grace is Gone also comments on the war, but in a roundabout way that should also resonate with audiences. Here is a rare picture that doesn't attempt to manage your responses, take sides or pour on the emotional syrup; it doesn't need to. It's one of those small, tender films that tells its unadorned but unbearably sad story so simply that I found myself needing to talk about it, think about it and work through it days after I saw it.

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Check out our interview with Charles Busch (pictured above) at www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Charles-Busch-A-Very-Candid-Person/16888.html .

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Grace is Gone is the astonishingly good feature debut of writer-director James C. Strouse. In it, John Cusack plays Everyman Stanley Phillips. Stanley's wife is in Iraq in the service while he is home raising their two daughters—12-year-old Heidi (Shélan O'Keefe) and 8-year-old Dawn (Gracie Bednarczyk) —as best he can. The film opens with Stanley—who has been rejected for military service due to poor eyesight—attending a support group meeting for spouses of Iraqi service personnel. He is the only male in the group and resists the efforts of the women (led by local actor and friend, funny and feisty Susan Messing) to reveal something about his relationship with Grace. It's apparent before he tells the women that he values his privacy that Stanley is closed off emotionally to the world and is dealing with many unresolved issues. When he receives the news that Grace has been killed in Iraq, he's frozen with grief and—instead of telling the girls when they come home from school—packs them in the car for an impromptu trip to a DisneyWorld-type vacation resort. This is done as an attempt to stave off the terrible moment when he must reveal the truth.

As Stanley and the girls head toward their destination we see the suddenly alien world through his grief-stricken eyes. The familiar trappings of American life—the malls; the fast food joints; the gas stations with their mini-marts; the claustrophobic, bland hotels—don't provide the comfort that they usually do and are seen as foreign and intrusive; their 'friendly' décor and service are phony. Strouse's cinematographer shoots these conventional locations in a flat, naturalistic style with no attempt to add a layer of typical Hollywood gloss. With the look of the film stripped of the visual glossiness, the no-nonsense, unfussy acting style of Cusack (who deserves an Oscar nomination for his nuanced performance) and the two young actors playing his daughters takes center stage and resonates even more. The elder daughter, especially—who has the cautious, watchful outlook of the son in Little Miss Sunshine, who suspects what is coming—is especially fine. At times, it feels like you're watching a home movie that has captured tragic events. Clint Eastwood's piano-based score is similarly simple yet effective.

With its tender, humanistic approach, Grace is Gone cuts very deep, and questions the human cost of the war in Iraq (and war in general) and its impact as well as the reason for the continued existence of the war—all without politicizing the issue. That on its own is a great achievement.

DVD Notes:

—Three DVDs of note worth picking up: One is A Very Serious Person from Wolfe Video, which stars female impersonator extraordinaire Charles Busch. The film, which also stars Polly Bergen and newcomer P.J. Verhoest, was written by Busch, who also makes his feature directing debut. It's a bittersweet coming-of-age story featuring Bergen as a feisty but lovable grandmother who is raising her pre-teen grandson to come to terms with his gay sexuality. Busch plays a gay, by-the-book hospice caregiver who moves in to care for granny and lay down the law as her terminal cancer approaches the last stages. The film, a three-character drama that is quietly effective (thanks to the performances of the three leads) is a decided shift from Busch's drag parody movies, Die Mommie Die! and Psycho Beach Party.

—A boxed set of both seasons and the pilot of Dante's Cove, the ultra-sexy gothic gay soap opera on Here! TV, arrives next Tuesday in a three-disc edition from Liberation Entertainment. In between all the witches' spells and the vampire biting, there's plenty of steamy gay and lesbian sex courtesy of the good-looking cast. This series remains cable's guiltiest gay pleasure.

—To see how far we've come, step into the time machine for 1969's The Gay Deceivers (from Dark Sky Films), a comedy whose plot focuses on two straight guys posing as a gay couple to avoid the Vietnam draft. Running 30 years before Chuck & Larry, the film is a fitfully amusing and decidedly interesting curio into gay history. The movie introduced the marvelous Michael Greer—a true gay pioneer—as one of the first openly gay actors in the movies. The disc includes the director's look at the making of the film.

Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter Web site, where there is also ordering information on my new book of collected film reviews, Knight at the Movies 2004-2006.

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