Skip to main content

A Harsh and Heartbreaking Leviticus Earns its Blunt though Potent Metaphors

Being gay in heavily religious and conservative environments is a difficult experience, doubly so if you are a child. I personally know several people in the LGBTQ community who came from small towns entrenched in those kind of values and have a lot of pain I can’t conceptualize related to that. But I can understand how both a young person’s feelings about their own identity and who they are attracted to can feel like a trap -something that can hurt them, something they have to run from, and something nobody else will understand.
This amorphous idea is given material form in Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus, one of the most honest supernatural horror movies of the last few years. It comes from Australia, which is starting to reveal itself as a fascinating hot-spot for great modern horror (and indeed that heavily metaphorical nature of its monster is reminiscent of the now classic Aussie horror film The Babadook). But then, Leviticus is just as much a coming-of-age romance -a type of film that where it concerns LGBTQ topics can often tend towards horror anyways just by the cloud of homophobia. And that really is the true darkness behind the film, Chiarella framing small-minded, doctrine-backed bigotry as the source of all the terror and paranoia two boys experience just for having a crush on each other.
The movie is set in a small town in rural Victoria dominated by evangelicals where Naim Reid (Joe Bird) and his single mother Arlene (Mia Wasikowska) have just moved to. By the start of the film, Naim has already befriended a boy called Ryan Whelan (Stacy Clausen); eventually the two realizing feelings for each other and beginning  a secret relationship. But some drama between them results in first Ryan’s homosexuality and later Naim’s being exposed to powerful figures in the community, who bring in a particular priest to perform a “deliverance” ritual on them, resulting in both boys being tormented by a demonic entity taking the shape of the other, luring before attacking them, and resulting in both developing a paranoia and aversion to each other until the monsters can be stopped.
The introduction of this horror is cleverly relayed through Naim’s perspective on the unusual and dangerous behaviour of Ryan towards him before he undergoes the ritual himself -a mystery involving seeing Ryan talking to someone who is not there, taking romantic pictures in a photo booth with the air, before appearing strangled and levitating. It makes out something akin to a possession before Naim experiences it and the pieces fall into place. But even then, the mystery and the freakiness of the situation is illustrated by Chiarella with considerable menace -like a Body Snatcher or a Thing this entity can vary in how it appears to Naim. Sometimes it can mimic Ryan’s behaviour perfectly and come to him with warmth and vulnerability, other times it is simply an automaton stalking him. It can be assumed that the same is true for Ryan and his perception of Naim. There is no tell though like in The Thing; there really is no way of knowing when it is the real person appearing or not.
Which is of course the design of the curse -a conditioning tool that is in principle not too unbelievable coming from the people it does. Indeed, various methods of driving young gay people away from the person they were romantically inclined towards appear often in conversion therapy practices. That is essentially the most direct metaphor for what the monster is in this movie, which like conversion therapy has very lethal consequences for those forced to suffer from it. The fact of the community, and even Naim’s mother, being willfully ignorant about it rings very true as well. But it is important that the monster does keep appearing to both boys -because they can’t simply kill their attraction to each other; it is also important that they endeavour to be together anyway.
Chiarella has no interest in dwelling purely in this torture for his characters, important though its emphasis may be. He allows it a vestige of heart and honest tension by relating the depth of Naim and Ryan's feelings -those feelings are tested but have a very hard time breaking in spite of the purpose of the ritual. Bird and Clausen have a very good chemistry as these two boys masking attraction in a heteronormative display of male friendship. As the film moves along, a greater tenderness is shown between them, especially from Ryan whose sincerity initially seemed a little in doubt. Clausen is also quite good at playing that object of Naim’s fear, turning on a dime from safe to threatening. Bird however effectively carries the movie, with an endearing display of vulnerability and romantic desperation, whose fear is informed too by guilt (Naim was the one who in a spout of jealousy outed Ryan and another boy in the first place), and yet through it he demonstrates an unwavering conviction. As much as he is tortured by this monster and wants it gone, he does not want the person whose form it takes to be gone from his life. It is sweet and it is steadfast, a courageous refutation against both the method and morality of what is violently wielded against them.
And it is most definitely coming from the community rather than the entity, much as the community -at least the adults- are ultimately rather minor characters. Their power casts a large shadow behind everything that the monster puts the kids through. A revelation from Naim’s mother related to his "treatment" is just as disturbing as any of the scenes in which Naim is tricked by Ryan's doppelgänger himself. The movie's ending especially does a great job of emphasizing this, in both the boys' choice and the impact it actually has on the monster -its power over them limited by that of the structure which created it. Again, it is a blunt though potent metaphor, allowing this horror film an unusually bittersweet resolution.
The Biblical passages of Leviticus often used to justify institutional homophobia in the church are not evoked in this movie, but the connotation speaks for itself, and with both a tenor of fear and disgust. Chiarella makes the case for how appropriate that sentiment is though, so well that the movie itself feels obvious. The premise should already be a staple of queer horror. So perhaps Leviticus is a touch late then, but it is (unfortunately) not by any means irrelevant.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Stylish and Charmingly Reinvented David Copperfield

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account)  is the most important book Charles Dickens ever wrote. It is not the most famous or influential by any means (that would of course be A Christmas Carol ), but it is the book that is the purest expression of the authors’ style, identity, and worldview. It is his most personal work, semi-autobiographical in its story of the chronology from infancy to adulthood of a character who overcomes great loss and hardships to find a fulfilling life as a writer. To read David Copperfield  is to understand Dickens himself. Armando Iannucci knew this when he decided to make a new adaptation of the novel for a twenty-first century audience. He also knew that Dickens adaptations are ubiquitous at this point. Films are a bit rarer, but every few years a new television adaptation rears its head to keep the authors’ unique world an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more