A very good film; I wish I did not see it

This is my feeling about Holding the Man. An Australian film about love.  A very, very moving; very, very  sad and very, very cruel film.

As I just came back to Sydney, I checked my local cinema for what’s on. Interesting that I went to a cinema only once when in was Gdansk. I must have had better things to do? Maybe I just had a better selection on TV than I have here and this is why I went to see a film in the cinema only once in the three months I was there.  It was Irrational Man. I was disappointed with the film.

Holding the Man was definitely not disappointing but very difficult to take for a sensitive person like myself (lol). This is about homosexual love, very beautiful and shown with sensitivity and also full technical details. This was confronting, too much information sort of a thing. After an initial shock I was accepting the scenes without  prude reactions. The boys who grew into men really loved each other. This was a beautiful, giving and forgiving love. I almost wonder if anything that close and true can happen in a heterosexual relationship.  

                                                                    

                                                                    

The film is based on a book and the book is based on life of the author Timothy Conigrave. As the love affair started early, when the boys were at school, later on, the author of the book wanted to learn more about life and experience more than monogamy with his lover. This lead to a short lived break up in the relationship. Tragedy happened, Tim contracted AIDS.  From the first scene of the film we know that both of the men will die before the story finishes, I was prepared for tragedy but at the end I could not take the explicitness and cruelty of medical procedures and the suffering of the two loving each other men. I left the cinema before the film finished. This has not happened to me before and I am now wondering: am I too sensitive or is the film so good?

I have not missed much of the film and the scenes are still flashing in my mind. I can not get rid of them even though I would very much like to. I am not sure if I am recommending the film of warning against that. Both at the same time.

The film is very well acted by all and Ryan Corr playing Timothy Conigrave in my opinion is absolutely exceptional. I have seen him few times on television. He also played The Water Diviner. There is something in his face that is particularly expressive and when he plays sadness, one really gets moved. He matches well tragic characters of Dostoyevsky; he would play many of them very convincingly.