Into It
(2005/Water Bearer DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C+
In one of
the more brutally honest films with any gay subject mater in a while, Jeffrey
Maccubbin’s semi-autobiographical Into
It (2005) deals with sexual abuse, gay men who love other gay men who may
hate them, date rape, dysfunction and what we might call gay isolationism in a
story about how a young man’s involvement with an older man and drugs becomes a
formula for self-destruction. To its
credit, this does not dwell or swim in the basest points of the above.
Now this
is not outright sex-addiction, but addiction to the lifestyle and abuse, some
of which tends to be a unique issue in the gay community for reasons I will
never totally know, are too extensive for any DVD review and you could see many
books being written about as several likely have been. But two items make this stand out from most
other gay releases.
It is
able to deal with the commodifcation of people and how that is linked to all of
the above, then is particularly daring to show that the gay bashing line is
thinner between gay and straight men than is ever addressed. Some of this is going to be very hard for
some viewers to watch and by theatrical ratings standards would rate a hard R
and maybe NC-17 in a one or two cases, but the sex as bad and the bad
experiences are shown with amazing effectiveness when they occur.
The only
thing holding this back is that Maccubbin was not far enough from the material
to develop ironic distance and be able to complete (closure or no closure) what
he starts in his honest explorations of his life, gay life and pain (the film
does not ignore AIDS like too many such projects have of late) it is a
breakthrough for him and maybe for gay cinema of some sort. In a few years, he should revisit this and I
bet he gets more spectacular results, but he is ahead of most Gay directors and
we can only hope one of them or Maccubbin picks up where this left off. In the meantime, it is worth a look for gay
audiences and anyone serious about independent filmmaking.
The letterboxed
1.78 X 1 image is soft and detail-challenged, sometimes as a stylized choice
and intentionally when showing the poor quality of consumer video (windowboxing
it does not quite work either), though it is shot on video and has some good color. Note the interesting approach to close-ups. The Dolby Digital 2.0 is usually stereo and
is not bad overall, but has its down moments.
Extras include an interview with Director Maccubbin and a trailer.
- Nicholas Sheffo
