beautiful thing
At lunch one day last week I went to a screening of the movie Beautiful Thing sponsored by the Out & Open employee resource group at work. It is a 1996 British film described as a “tenderly romantic coming-of-age story as two boys in a British school fall in love.”
It is a charming story and it was a wonderful break from my work day. It was also a chance to grow and to experience, via film, what life may have been like for these two boys in 1996. The world has changed so much, even since 1996.
Movies do not always contain lifelike images of friends, families, or lovers. For most of my life a “couple” has been portrayed in film as a man and a woman (or a boy and a girl). Certainly if the couple is affectionate it is done by a male and a female. In recent years other types of couples have come to the screen and stage, but they are much less likely to look like a couple in real life – no holding hands or touching or any of the public displays that are a normal part of an intimate relationship.
Hiding real life from film and television hurts all of us a little, and some of us much more. We have no problems showing and viewing every kind and method of death and cruelty imaginable, why should we hide any of the many different and beautiful kinds of love?
I joined the Out & Open group some time ago because I believe we are all the same, no mater how we couple, and much needs to be done to expand all of our thoughts and all of our consciousness to accept every couple the way the couple wants us to understand them. Beyond that, the people who for whatever reason feel the need to be in everyone else’s home also need to be educated and every single one of us shares the responsibility to do that, with both words and actions.
Click here to watch the trailer
David
david geiger 
One Response to “beautiful thing”
I’ve come across a quote which resonates with me a lot, I dont remember who said it first but it goes something like – “Cinema is the reflection of society” (or something of that sort) and I feel like ciname is slowly changing and has recently found the courage to portray differnt kinds of relationships just how the real world has started accepting it..
I am positive that over the next few years cinema will mature just like our society and this will be the new normal.
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