{"id":209,"date":"2017-05-06T07:27:21","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T07:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/2017\/05\/06\/httptheblurb-com-aureviewsholding-the-man-movie-review\/"},"modified":"2017-05-06T07:27:21","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T07:27:21","slug":"httptheblurb-com-aureviewsholding-the-man-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/httptheblurb-com-aureviewsholding-the-man-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Holding the Man – movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Based upon the successful memoir and stage play of the same name, this is a true story of a 15-year love affair between two people who met at school.<\/p>\n

It is Australia in the \u201870s and Tim Conigrave, a budding actor at an all-boys Catholic school, has fallen big time for the captain of the football team, John Caleo. Facing discrimination and antipathy, temptation and jealousy, separation and illness, the pair first forge a close relationship and then endure. Tim and John face the opprobrium of their school and their parents, let alone the wider community. But those battles are nothing compared to what they have to face up to because, consider for a moment, that this is when HIV\/AIDS first reared its ugly head.<\/p>\n

\"Neil-Armfield-02\"Director Neil Armfield (Candy<\/i>) read Tim Conigrave\u2019s memoir soon after it was published in 1995. Nick Enright helped Conigrave finish it and Armfield had just made a TV film of Enright\u2019s Coral Island<\/i>, so he tried to get the screen rights to Conigrave\u2019s book, but they weren\u2019t available. Seventeen years later, Armfield was approach directly to take charge and that is how the film came to be made. Writer Tommy Murphy first adapted Conigrave\u2019s book to the stage in 2006 and then saw the play travel the world. Conigrave\u2019s work won the UN Human Rights Award for Non-Fiction and was counted among the \u201c100 Favourite Australian Books\u201d by the Australia Society of Authors. It has been reprinted 15 times in Australia alone and been published in the US, the UK and Europe.<\/p>\n

Murphy calls it a love story that \u201cspeaks across generations, cultures and sexuality.\u201d He says when he now watches the film he\u2019s \u201camazed by the tragedy, the drama and the beauty\u201d of the story.<\/p>\n

There have been several noteworthy movies with gay themes that I have seen over the years, several of them Oscar winners \u2013 the likes of Brokeback Mountain <\/i>and A Single Man, Milk <\/i>and The Crying Game, Boys Don\u2019t Cry <\/i>and Blue is the Warmest Colour<\/a>, Philadelphia <\/i>and Dallas Buyers Club<\/a>. <\/i>While Holding the Man<\/i> isn\u2019t in that league, it still tells a powerful and compelling story of love and death, trauma and discrimination. Importantly, it has warmth and humour, for in between the thistles there is much light in the relationship between Conigrave and Caleo. It is unashamedly confronting for a straight man to see naked males rolling around in bed together and for that reason many will choose not to see Holding the Man<\/i>. That though is a pity because love is love is love regardless of one\u2019s sexual preference and the HIV\/AIDS epidemic is all too real.<\/p>\n