"We don't need no piece of paper from the City Hall keeping us tied and true…"—Joni Mitchell, "My Ol' Man"
Historically, the California Supreme Court's recent decision affirming gay marriage—while good news—doesn't take away much from the countless couples who committed themselves without sanction in decades past; the intergenerational partnership of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy being perhaps one of the most infamous, if not controversial. That lifelong partnership is affectionately documented in Guido Santi's and Tina Mascara's Chris & Don: A Love Story (site), which Variety's Robert Koehler describes as "focusing on the texture and sweetness of a particularly beguiling real-life gay love saga."
At The House Next Door, Keith Ulrich—fortunate to have been one of Bachardy's models—discerns that the film's "overall sense" is "of an ultimately unbreakable love's consecration." On the other hand, the disdain of Ulrich's cohort N.P. Thompson for "the dreary obsession elderly queer men have for young male flesh" and "the predatory (is there any way that it can't be?) relationship" (what he calls a "sycophantic love-fest") between Isherwood and Bachardy—colors his "review" with a shade just this side of homophobia, though it's perhaps best to simply call it unkind. Enthused by his condemnation, he actually mentions the documentary here and there.
Thompson's arched and disapproving eyebrow is hardly solitary, however. Even Dr. Evelyn Hooker—Isherwood's landlord at the time he met Bachardy—expressed disapproval of the relationship, necessitating their evacuating his beloved garden cottage. So much for praising the social adjustment of self-identified homosexuals. And Joseph Cotten—who the documentary suggests would never dream of confronting Isherwood directly—was fond of singling Bachardy out at parties to dispense vitriol about "half-men."
The documentary is composed of an astonishing wealth of home movie footage and archival photography; interviews with Leslie Caron, John Boorman "and even Miss Liza herself" (as Rod Armstrong understates it); and tender and insightful animated sequences where Isherwood and Bachardy's animal alter-egoes—an old horse and a young cat, respectively—reveal the complicated and nuanced dynamic of their love for one another. The film's final animated sequence confirms the necessary belief that love conquers death.
Cross-published on The Evening Class.
