Friday, September 19, 2008

Movie review: Chris & Don. A Love Story

Defying convention - transcending taboos.

By John P. Meyer

Chris & Don: A Love Story

"Chris & Don: A Love Story" is the true-life story of the passionate three-decade relationship between British writer Christopher Isherwood and American portrait painter Don Bachardy, thirty years his junior. From Isherwood's Kit-Kat-Club years in Weimar-era Germany (the inspiration for his most famous work) to the couple's first meeting on the sun-kissed beaches of 1950s Malibu, their against-all-odds saga is brought to dazzling life by a treasure trove of multimedia. Bachardy's contemporary reminiscences artfully interact with archival footage, rare home, reenactments, and, most sweetly, whimsical animations based on the cat-and-horse cartoons the pair used in their personal correspondence. With Isherwood's status as an out-and-proud gay maverick, and Bachardy's eventual artistic triumph away from the considerable shadow of his life partner, the film is above all a joyful celebration of a most extraordinary couple.

Source: Cinema Source

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When young and impressionable Don Bachardy met middle-aged, successful Christopher Isherwood on what Don's older brother referred to as a "queer beach" in Santa Monica, it ushered in a new stage in both their lives.

For British-born Isherwood, who immigrated to the U.S. following several years spent in Germany's Weimar Republic (which experience resulted in The Berlin Stories and - later - his screenplay for Cabaret), the meeting marked the ending point of a turbulent spiritual journey. For Don, it represented the beginning of a life-long romantic relationship that would nurture his artistic talent and shape his personality.

As told in Tina Mascara and Guido Santi's Chris & Don. A Love Story, Isherwood's early life story parallels the unsettled history of Europe spanning two world wars: his father was killed in the first one, and he (Christopher) was forced to flee Germany as seeds of the second one sprouted following the rise of the Nazi Party. Rather than returning to his English homeland - where he felt uncomfortable expressing his homosexuality - Isherwood voyaged with his friend, the poet W.H. Auden, to America and the promise of broader views. He ended up in California, where his writing skills were put to work in the film industry.

In the creative crucible that was Hollywood, Isherwood rubbed intellectual elbows with such luminaries as Aldous Huxley, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Somerset Maugham and Igor Stravinski. As a result of his writing of screenplays, he also became acquainted with a panoply of film stars. (Incidentally, Isherwood maintained that his film scripts actually improved on his writing style, honing it in the process of maintaining the necessary brevity.)

Marilyn and Don

Meanwhile, Don and his brother Ted (four years his senior) found themselves swept up in the glitz and glamour of the movie world from a fan's perspective. They attended gala openings and red carpet events, snatching photo ops with stars of the day: Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, Leslie Caron.

As much a father figure as a life partner and lover, Isherwood literally molded Don into the man he was becoming. As Caron, who maintained an acquaintance with the couple, puts it: "Don as a man was entirely formed by Chris." So much so that California-born Don soon began speaking with a British accent, and picking up other verbal shadings employed by Chris. (When we first hear Isherwood speaking in an archival film clip, we're astonished at how much the two sound alike.)

Don and Christopher

Furthermore, Isherwood encouraged and cultivated Don's talent for portraiture, enrolling him in art classes when Don's own father thought such a pursuit to be folly. (Unsurprisingly, Don's parents never approved of their son's relationship with the gay writer 30 years his senior.)

Don and Chris would live together through good times and bad for 34 years, until Isherwood's wasting death from prostate cancer in 1986.

Their touching story is told through excerpts from Isherwood's diary (read by Michael York); home movies and personal photographs from the couple's travels; and, primarily, through direct on-camera narration by Don himself, who continues to live and work in the southern California home he shared with Chris.

Don and Christopher, later years

Don proves a talented story teller, and the story he has to tell features numerous fascinating anecdotes, such as:

* the road trip that he and Christopher took to a film set in Monument Valley, where John Ford's film crew mistook the two for father and son

* the sea cruise they took to Gibraltar, with a stopover in Tangier for a visit with writer Paul Bowles - and the hashish-induced psychosis that ensued

* an unexpected close encounter with Montgomery Clift in an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles

One of Don's many portraits of Christopher Isherwood

The remembrances of this sentimental, moderately garrulous old fellow are interspersed occasionally with whimsical animations of a cartoon horse and cat, representing the pet identities Chris and Don devised for each other. The animations (done by Katrina Swanger) mimic child-like sketches done by Isherwood for Don, often as a means of expressing sentiments that were too difficult to convey by more straightforward means.

The final segment of the 90-minute documentary focuses on Don's luminous portraiture, culminating with the visual chronicle he produced as Isherwood progressed through the physical and emotional deterioration brought on by approaching death. There's a gut-wrenching final portrait produced after Chris had passed away, his open eyes hauntingly devoid of the spark of life. This frankly horrifying set of drawings ends up serving as a kind of de-mystification of the process of dying, and as such renders it less fearsome.

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