Movie Review: 1985

1985 (2018) 

Directed by Yen Tan

Written by Yen Tan 

Starring Cory Michael Smith, Virginia Madsen, Michael Chiklis, 

Release Date March 19th, 2018 

Published August 12th, 2018 

Director Yen Tan’s 1985 left me an emotional mess. This incredibly moving drama about a gay man returning home for the holidays to his conservative, religious, Texas family hit me right me in heart with its brave storytelling and artful construction. Filmed in 16 millimeter black and white, the film gives you a feeling of a memory being recalled with great detail, directly from the year 1985. 

1985 stars Corey Michael Smith, best known for his role on TV’s Gotham, as Adrian. Adrian moved away from his Texas home three years ago to live in New York City and, for the first time, to live openly as a gay man. Having never come out to his parents, expertly portrayed by Virginia Madsen and Michael Chiklis, Adrian decides immediately to keep himself in the closet while back home so as not to upset his family dynamic. 

Adrian’s sexuality however, is not the only secret he’s decided to keep from his family. Verbal and visual cues will slowly reveal as the film goes on that Adrian has been losing weight, he’s been getting ill frequently and in a beautifully telling moment, his beloved dog clings to his side as if to protect and comfort him. It’s not hard to suss out what Adrian’s secret is though the film does gently allow the secret to be unfolded throughout the story. 

1985 was directed by Yen Tan, a filmmaker who I am unfortunately not familiar with though this is his fourth feature film according to Wikipedia. In notes that accompanied the movie when I saw it, Tan discussed how working with AIDS patients years ago inspired him to want to tell the story of a closeted gay man and the sadness, frustration, and heartache that comes from keeping secrets so essential to who you are. 

There is a next level of sadness at play here that I am reluctant to go into. I was lucky to watch the film without having read other reviews on Wikipedia or IMDB, places that give away the secret Adrian is hiding. Again, it’s not a twist or even a major reveal, it’s an organic, growing part of the story. I just really loved watching it unfold even as the brilliant visual and vocal clues in the movie give the game away with intent. 

It’s a wonderful piece of filmmaking and it’s not intended to fool you or gut punch you, it makes sense to the plot why Adrian is hiding something and the journey toward him actually saying what is happening out loud is powerful. Actor Corey Michael Smith does an incredible job of making Adrian genial and awkward and delicately pragmatic. The secret of his sexuality isn’t really much of a secret, as we come to find out, but the way in which the film gently layers this into the characters and the story is remarkable and emotional. 

I haven’t even mentioned one of my favorite parts of 1985. Actress Jamie Chung plays Carly, Adrian’s ex-girlfriend whom he broke up with three years earlier when he left for New York. Now an aspiring stand up comic,  Carly has no idea that Adrian is gay and when the two reconnect there is some awkward and brilliantly relatable truth to their interaction. Carly may seem like an extraneous character in some ways but her presence underlines dramatic moments from Adrian’s backstory that pay off with strong emotional impact. 

1985 will be on my list of the best movies of the year. Few films have touched me as deeply as this movie has. It’s not an easy movie, it’s not a movie for an audience that doesn’t want to be challenged and it is not a movie that rewards you with easy answers. This is a deeply emotional and beautifully rendered film that, if you allow it to, will break your heart in ways that will make it stronger and more empathetic going forward. That, to me, is a better feeling than any 10 blockbusters can provide. 

What a year for Black and White movies huh? Roma dazzled us with its arrival on Netflix last week with it’s crisp, clean, black and white sleekness. And here, in 1985, we get a black and white movie that uses this type of film to give age to the story, to evoke the time it is set within and to give the film a dreamlike or memory-like feeling. The grainy, slightly dark, look of 1985 gives the film the feeling of a story being recalled from memory, a little hazy, a little fuzzy, yet recalled with detail and deep emotion, as if we were in the mind of someone recalling this story and feeling what they felt at the time.