Those People (2015) [Literary/Film Analysis Vol.I - P1]

Those People (2015)

"On Manhattan's gilded Upper East Side, a young gay painter is torn between an obsession with his infamous best friend and a promising new romance with an older foreign pianist."

I will start by saying I give this movie a 4.5 star rating. Now, I am by no means a seasoned reviewer so you may take that with a grain of salt. I would also like to begin by telling you that I think the description for this movie wildly miscommunicates the idea of what this movie is truly about. I think the romance is nothing but a vehicle for the coming-of-age plotlines that the movie displays. That is my own opinion and this review will be littered with them.

This isn't the first time I’ve started watching this movie but it is the first time I had finished it. Since its release in 2015 I had tried multiple times to get through it, each time I tried again it was as if it was the first watch because I blocked the previous viewings out of my mind and subsequently stopped watching the movie before its end. It's the same way how Euphoria or The Boys is personally just a hard watch for me but I never forced myself through those series like I had forced myself through this movie, and have since felt no need to do so. But for this movie, it was a critically acclaimed LGBTQ movie so of course I wanted to see what the fuss was about. It has an actor I love (Jason Ralph obviously) and I held trust in him to only act in something he felt was worth investing the time in for. And I get it now.

This movie displayed self hatred, love, hope, perseverance, self discovery, impulse, resignation, and growth. All in this complicated wrapping and illusions of grandeur. I sort of feel like most people live in the aforementioned portrayed illusions of grandeur in the way we handle grief, loss, anger, and longing. I believe they handled the idea well in this movie. I can’t say it brought me out of my own illusions, but not every movie is meant to do that. It certainly called attention to it. Now I feel like dreaming and I feel like yearning. I feel like wanting something for myself. It can be a bittersweet way to make your viewers feel but it can also remind them that they're alive.

I felt that the viewer is supposed to relate to every single main character to the point where if you added them all up you would get a full person who has lived through love and loss. You, at moments of weakness. Not whole people but every person in a singular moment in time. Love and loss and resignation, and what connects it all is hope and self reflection. This movie parallels ALL of the introspection that a person may experience throughout their young adult life by relating each part into a single character and then having those characters interact. Condensing it into a movie feels as fucking bittersweet and painful and hopeful as real life does, as derivative as that is, and I think it’s worth the time and thought.

Despite this movie reminding me I am alive and have real feelings, I still feel empty just as I did before viewing it. For that and the fact that it was a difficult watch I will take away half a star. While I believe movies that merely parallel introspection are worth watching and are wonderful, the audience satisfaction and the ease of which they experience the content is still a factor. Funnily enough, I don't actually suggest anybody to watch this movie. It found me in one of my own moments of weakness and then I drank for three days straight, so... it doesn't seem to be the best mood setter. Talk to some friends, find love, listen to good music.

So long, and until next time.

- Clyde