Directed by Greg Araki starring Mike Dyrti and Sraig Gilmore Reviewed by Peter Purton The Living End is not a film for the faint-hearted. To call it 'entertainment' is stretching a point. Yet it is a very powerful, and wellmade, low-budget drama.
Its theme is an old one: outcasts on the road, exploring The Revolutionary Quality of Malcolm X S1 inc pâp to: Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU :Page 12 Feb.27, 1993 No.38 Bush's America.
Its explicit target is the marginalisation of the disease, ind those living with it, by the US government. Its answers, however, are neither liberal (as with several mawkish recent films), nor socialist but those of Queer Politics.
John, a Los Angeles gay freelance writer (why must all the gay characters be in such employment?) is told he is HIV Positive, despite practis ing safe sex 'most of the time'. He picks up Luke, a hitch-hikThe Revolutionary Quality of Malcolm X • Outook who has acquired a pistol from an hilariously surrewlis. tic encounter with a lesbian couple.
A drama begins based on their relationship, and Luke's response to their homophobic and murderously violent world. No wonder some liberal reviewers have panned the film: the various gay bashers they meet are blown away with vengeful violence, in sharp contrast to the erotic and deeply living relationship setween the boys. No safe sex here. Neither cares any more.
So this is the traditional world view turned upside down. But instead of affirming the rights of people living with HIV AIDS, The Living End simply wreaks venge ance. "Fuck the world' is the slogan. We have nothing left to lose, so let's do what we want - only we don't know what it is or where to go.
The retribution suggested for President Bush for his wanton abandonment of people with AIDS to their deaths may seem apt; but it is not going to he dimax is dramatic anc pping, but the message solate. As Derek Jarman F said of The Living End, 'it transgresses.
Many thousands are already dead in the West, as well as unknown but vast numbers in Africa. And a catacysmic slaughter which will dwarf the present death toll now hangs across the world.
While the governments of C directed by GREGG ARAKI with minimal concern, since the main sufferers are gay men, black or drug users, it is right to be angry. But the anger of The Living End, while powerful, like its source in Queer Politics, offers now way out either.
The Living End is showing at MGM Piccadilly and the Every. man, Hampstead.
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