A Very Natural Thing
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| A Very Natural Thing | |
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| Directed by | Christopher Larkin |
| Produced by | Christopher Larkin |
| Written by | Joseph Coencas Christopher Larkin |
| Starring | Robert McLane Curt Gareth Bo White Anthony McKay Marilyn Meyers |
| Music by | Gordon Gottlieb Bert Lucarelli Samuel Barber |
| Cinematography | C.H. Douglass |
| Editing by | Terry Manning |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | 1974 (USA) |
| Running time | 80 min. |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
A Very Natural Thing is a 1974 film about a gay man named David who leaves a monastery to become a public school teacher by day, whilst looking for true love in a gay bar by night. It was one of the first films about gay relationships intended for mainstream, commercial distribution. The original title of the film was For As Long as Possible. It was directed by Christopher Larkin and was released to lukewarm reviews in 1973 and given an R (rating) rating by the Motion Picture Association of America.
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[edit] Plot synopsis
The film begins as a mini-documentary of New York City's 1973 Gay Pride parade and rally, with a young lesbian unabashedly declaring that being gay is "a very natural thing." The action cuts in flashback to the protagonist, David (Robert Joel), going through the ritual of being released from his vocation as a monk in a monastery. He then is seen as a public school teacher of English Literature in the New York City area, who spends his time off driving into the city to meet up at a gay bar with his "oldest friend from Schenectady," NY, Alan, played by Jay Pierce. In the course of the evening, David is singled out to dance by Mark (Curt Gareth), who is a successful insurance salesman. They end up spending the night together and "hitting it off." Through David's leading the two of them start a monogamous relationship with David moving in with Mark. The relationship breaks down, however, as Mark wants to have sex with other men at bathhouses and participate in orgies on Fire Island. He rejects the idea of modeling a gay relationship on heterosexual marriage, though David tries to get him to see their relationship in this way—if Mark is brought to see what he and David have is a relationship at all. He is irritated that David wants to "keep pushing this romantic thing." All this is compounded by Mark's continuing disinterest in David's anxiety about Mark's failure to reciprocate love and concern back to him: at one point in their relationship Mark tells David, "I love you, whatever that means." After a year, though, the two of them are just marking time—not growing in their love for each other. Mark, in literally pushing David away, unintentionally gets David to move out of his apartment. David temporarily moves in with Alan, who gives David an objective perspective on what happened: David was really the dominant personality with Mark being recessively undecisive. In a later encounter with Mark beginning at Coney Island David finally realizes that Mark had only been using him for his own sexual convenience.
After a season of loneliness, David meets a divorced photographer named Jason (Bo White) at the 1973 Gay Pride rally, which began the film. David and Jason go to Jason's apartment and hit it off. We then are introduced to Jason's ex-wife and toddler son, P.J. just before Labor Day. Jason tells his ex-wife that he is now seeing someone with whom he would be spending the upcoming holiday. The end of the film shows the two men together with the implication that they will try to build a new and committed relationship that is somehow different from heterosexual marriage and the 1970s gay subculture. It seems ironic, though, that Jason wants David to move in with him in a conventional way when it was Jason who turned his back on conventionality along with heterosexuality in being divorced from his wife; however, the joy comes in Jason's finally finding someone he can actually talk to and David's finally finding true love—maybe, thanks to Jason's not being as unconventional as Mark was! The second last scene in the film might be considered unconventionally romantic as Jason is seen photographing David while telling him different things to say other than "cheese."
The film was seen as the gay response to Love Story (1970), which is evident in Mark's statement to David, "Love means never having to say you're in love." The story demonstrates that a lasting gay relationship can be as "different" as the heterosexual relationship in Love Story, which is not the conventional heterosexual marriage. (Perhaps each relationship is unique in itself defying imposed clichés.) David tells Jason that he is committed to him, but that this commitment is based on wanting to be together not having to be together. The ending is optimistic, which is out of the ordinary for gay relationships in films up until then.
[edit] Critical reaction
The film was one of the first mainstream films to show homosexuality as a valid and normal act of love, i.e. "a very natural thing," as it attempted to explore the options for gay couples in 1973, including footage of an actual Gay Pride celebration. Many heterosexual film critics felt that the film's depiction of love between two men as romantic made the film automatically "an argument rather than an entertainment" (New York Post). The film showed a young gay couple going through many of the same rituals and facing many of the same challenges as a straight couple; and, for many heterosexual Americans, that was a daring notion — perhaps too daring.
Some gay film critics felt that film was not political enough: that the characters were too apolitical, too middle class and that, by rejecting the philosophy of free love or sexual liberation, the film was rejecting what some gay activists felt was a necessary value of the new gay liberation movement.
Larkin responded to the criticism by saying, "I wanted to say that same-sex relationships are no more problematic but no easier then any other human relationships. They are in may ways the same and in several ways different from heterosexual relationships but in themselves are no less possible or worthwhile". (The Celluloid Closet pg. 208, 1987). Incidentally, Vito Russo, who wrote The Celluloid Closet appears in A Very Natural Thing.
[edit] Availability
The film was released in VHS in 1996, it has recently been released on DVD.
