Shelter

"Pure being," a friend of mine once said enviously of the surfers riding the waves along the Southern California coast some thirty years ago. Though there was a strict demarcation between the gay section of the beaches and those parts that belonged to the surfers alone, even then a few surfers hung out at night in the Breakers or one of the other gay bars along Highway One, especially in Laguna. There, what seemed so easy a life out in the Pacific, just following the next big waves one after another, became less obvious and more conflicted. Stories about coming out have so dominated many gay films that the theme has developed into an archetype, a genre of its own with endless variations: from dark into light, from secrets into revelation. In Shelter, Zach is a young artist who has turned down a scholarship at CalArts in order to stay home to care for his nephew Cody. Zach has inherited the family gene, from his mother he says. All the concerns and nearly all the love the five year old Cody should find in his mother, Zach's sister Jeanne, he gets from Zach alone. Zach has had a long time girlfriend, but everything about their relationship is tentative, on hold. When he meets his best friend's older brother again after several years, they surf together, just as they used to. But Shaun is an openly gay man who has published a novel which Zach has read. Shaun's sexuality is no secret to Zach, but Zach's is to Shaun--as it may still be to Zach himself, at least in the sense that he has never before been with a man (or in all likelihood a woman; his responses to his girlfriend are mostly tepid, except when his real longings frighten him). What Zach wants more than anything are family and love. After a night during which he and Shaun kiss, Zach is happy but its meaning is still uncertain. He rides the waves, paces the deck of the house he shares with his sister and nephew in what he calls San Pedro's ghetto, then drives back to the family house on the beach where Shaun is staying to recuperate emotionally after a boyfriend has dumped him in L.A. What follows between Zach and Shaun is stunning in its impact upon both men. Their coupling, however, is not filmed as soft core porn, all or nearly all about the physical alone, but as love scenes. What matters most is the feeling shown through their eyes. All the acting in this emotionally profound film is superb, but the love beyond words Zach and Shaun manage to express just with their eyes has almost never before been seen in movies, not even, say, in Brokeback where to some degree it was often having to be hidden by one or the other man. What follows in Shelter is Zach's coming to understand what that love means to him for the rest of his life. Part of this is the usual problem of coming out to his friends and to his sister, though nearly all that effort is accomplished for him; they know before he tells them. But he must also come to see himself better; he must change, too, as he tells Shaun later. Part of that transformation is his discovering more fully who Shaun is. Shaun has been criticized by some viewers for being too patient with Zach. But patience is part of love, one of the virtues that help people abide all the messes we make or almost make out of our lives. When Zach learns that Shaun has mailed his application and portfolio to CalArts, he sees, quietly, the man's generosity. In a way, Shaun has shown that he loves Zach as kindly and patiently as Zach loves Cody. Zach's and Shaun's erotic communion is intense. But this is a love that is also caritas, deep, perhaps abiding. It is his recognition of that possibiity, if not certainty that leads Zach back to Shaun, especially after a talk with his girlfriend in which he says his only regret (about being gay) is that he wanted to make a family with her. In this moment between them, it is her goodness which allows her to encourage Zach to return to Shaun, to the different family he might find now through Shaun and with Cody. At least, she says, he should try. Near the end, after Zach and Shaun drive to the house to pick up Cody from Zach's sister who is moving to Portland with her rough boyfriend, Zach turns to Shaun and takes his hand in his. It is a gesture of love between them as telling as any more passionate embrace. The seemingly unencumbered lives both men had known together surfing when younger--Shaun the master, Zach the pupil in a running joke between them--has grown into a love that is in every sense good. I think this is one of the best movies ever made about gay men, searchingly decent and generously spirited about love without any loss in erotic force. It is also wonderfully realized, except in a few of the songs on the soundtrack, in both the director's eye and the hearts of all the performers, even those in relatively minor roles (Gabe is as perfect a surfer dude as one can imagine, but with more than the usual soul). But Trevor Wright as Zach gives to his character an especially touching complexity. Zach is in some ways still a kid, talking in the lingo of surfers, tagging buildings, riding his skateboard. But he's also emotionally older than everyone else in his life, already committed to a way of living many people never come to. His coming out is more painful to himself than it is to others perhaps because his need for real communion is already so great. Yet he finds it. This is emotionally complex work for so young an actor. But every gesture he makes, everything he expresses is true; no moment ever feels false or contrived. What the movie leaves one with is a sense of both the hopes and ambiguities of moral being, a far more difficult, yet greater life than merely riding the waves of one's youth.

While watching "Shelter," a rather sweet-natured story about a good-hearted, self-sacrificing young man dealing with the realization that he might be gay, I was reminded of the the Otto Preminger film of 1962, "Advise and Consent." In it a young but influential senator, now happily married and with a small child, had had sexual relations with a man while in military service who, now in poverty, is attempting to he commits suicide rather than suffer exposure, an effective if extreme solution to his problems. CAUTION -- the next paragraphs contains spoilers to the plot of "Shelter."contact the senator for money and threatening to expose his past. The senator becomes so distraught with the situation before him thatThis film makes one realize the distance we have (hopefully) traversed in 50 or so years. In "Shelter" an artistically gifted young man, Zach, played by Trevor Wright, is helping to support his sister and her little boy, Cody (Jackson Wurth), and their ailing father, and, as a result, has given up his hopes of attending an art academy. Zach's boyhood friend, Gabe (Ross Thomas), who is straight, has an older brother, Shaun, (Brad Rowe), who had taught them both to surf a few years before and is known by his brother, Gabe, to be gay. Shaun, who has returned to the area and is living at the family residence in a much nicer part of town, reestablishes an acquaintance with Zach and a friendship begins to develop between them. As time goes on this becomes more than a friendship as Zach comes to terms with his sexual feelings and gradually falls in love with Shaun. Zach's sister, Jeanne (Tina Holmes), is planning to leave the area with her dolt of a male friend and intends to leave her child in Zach's care for a considerable period. Zach's relationship with Shaun becomes known to her and she initially doesn't want her child anywhere near Shaun, but gradually comes to realize that Cody, who is very attached to Zach and now to Shaun as well, would be better off under his and Shaun's care than with her and her male friend who isn't particularly fond of Cody. The film ends with Zach, now having broken up with his girlfriend, Tori (Katie Walder), and his little nephew now living happily with Shaun who has seen to it that Zach will get to attend art school after all. The film was skillfully written and directed by Jonah Markowitz. The brief final scene of Zach, Cody and Shaun happily romping on the beach was apparently added some months after the film had been considered complete as both Trevor Wright and Brad Rowe are here seen having long hair.The cast is generally excellent and the developing relationship portrayed between Zach and Shaun, a bit rocky at times due to Zach's uncertainty and hesitancy, being all the more captivating for that reason. This is a dramatically and visually pleasing, well-made if rather short film about a character portrayed as being gay who does not necessarily end up as a victim of a mental breakdown, suicide or murder. There are several scenes in this movie that are quite affecting, most notably the two scenes in which his two straight friends -- his ex-girlfriend, Tori, and his boyhood surfing buddy, Gabe -- each in their way help put Zach back on the right track toward his relationship with Shaun, his obvious true love.Zach is, of course, the central character of the story and all of the other characters are defined by their relationships to him. There is essentially no scene in the film in which Zach doesn't appear and the title could easily have been "Zach's Story." How the title of "Shelter" was chosen isn't exactly clear to me. Trevor Wright and Brad Rowe, both straight actors, bring a degree of warmth and believability to their characters that is quite amazing.Incidentally, in the commentary track, director Jonah Markowitz erroneously refers to the suspension bridge in San Pedro, shown several times in the film, as the Saint Thomas Bridge. The correct name is the Vincent Thomas bridge.UPDATE -- 7-11-14: Well, I held off for as long as I could and finally gave in and bought into the imported region-free Blu-ray of "Shelter." I had some trepidation. "Shelter" was originally shot as a 16 mm negative, blown up to a 35 mm print, so I expected the possibility of seeing little improvement with Blu-ray. Not so at all! The improvement in detail and contrast is apparent from the first frame. The sound is DTS optional for 5.1 and 2.0 stereo and is an improvement over the DVD version in that respect as well. And there was no compatibility problem. Only disappointment -- it doesn't include the commentary track available on the original. But I have the DVD version tucked into the same case with the Blu-ray, so no big deal. Worth every cent.

GREATTTTTTTT MOVIE