1985

The AIDS epi­dem­ic has impact­ed mil­lions world­wide. Cory Michael Smith’s char­ac­ter, Adri­an Lester, is just one of them, and is the focus of direc­tor Yen Tan’s LGBT-cham­pi­oning film, 1985. The nar­ra­tive charts Lester’s return to his Tex­an home­town for Christ­mas, bring­ing with him a diag­no­sis he can’t bear to reveal. The film offers a tidy insight into sub­ur­ban 1980s Amer­i­cana, chron­i­cling the stig­ma of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty on both fam­i­lies and individuals.

Michael Chik­lis plays the high­ly-strung patri­arch who casts an ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive shad­ow over his son. His take on a dis­ap­prov­ing Viet­nam vet­er­an is one we’ve seen before, but he uses this plat­form to define how stone-faced mas­culin­i­ty can detract from the fam­i­ly dynamic.

Smith’s plays the son as a ball of nerves and brings a sense of lev­i­ty and suit­ably to the char­ac­ter. He well por­trays the sad­ness of a man liv­ing to the sound of a tick­ing clock while try­ing to tie up loose ends. Dur­ing the film’s qui­eter moments, often set against mono-monikered cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Hutch’s haunt­ing back­grounds, we see the the dam­age this sense of reserve has caused.

The dia­logue is sen­si­tive­ly writ­ten, although its many fake outs regard­ing the cen­tral issue can grow frus­trat­ing, long after dra­mat­ic irony has tak­en hold. The script tends to sway toward unre­lat­ed top­ics to veil its expos­i­to­ry pur­pose, which caus­es us to ques­tion the valid­i­ty of these oth­er­wise nat­ur­al performances.

This dis­par­i­ty between father and son is cement­ed by the grainy mono­chrome cin­e­matog­ra­phy and harsh light­ing. Their fam­i­ly home, usu­al­ly a bas­tion of safe­ty, is cold and uncom­fort­able, as cam­era pans to reveal our oth­er­wise-obscured pro­tag­o­nist, or frames a din­ner scene from floor-level.

Cur­tis Heath’s metic­u­lous­ly employed score hits the right emo­tion­al beats, even though it some­times drowns out dia­logue as a way to mir­ror the inter­nal iso­la­tion this secret is build­ing. Some­times the music is com­plete­ly absent, allow­ing Tan’s effec­tive long-takes to real­ly empha­sise a sense of awk­ward­ness in the room.

As the end­ing fades to black, it becomes appar­ent that this is just one of many sim­i­lar sto­ries. A sen­ti­men­tal clos­ing mon­tage which fol­lows these char­ac­ters on from the main nar­ra­tive does feel a lit­tle gra­tu­itous and unnec­es­sary, yet the strong lead and fine-tooth for­mal aspects man­ages to bring this small-scale per­son­al dra­ma home.