I've just watched Leviticus, and this is my 2000-word review I left on my Letterboxd. (With spoilers, bare in mind):
Throughout history, for queerness to be seen in media, it was to be punished.
Not in this film.
I walked out of that theatre with my head in my hands. I have never in my life felt so utterly complete. No movie I've seen has ever come close to the perfect queer narrative, one that does not shy away from the pain, the intense monster in your head telling you it's something completely your fault. Does not shy away from emotional desire, while suffering from religious guilt, suffering at the hands of others who deem you to be everything but human. Does not shy away from writing us well, from not punishing us for simply existing.
A common factor in queer films is horror, placing queer love at the peak of sociopathic, murderous connotations. As if, when they cannot show how immoral queerness is through narrative alone, they must show it by proxy. A lot of things the horror genre does wrong while trying to explain queerness and repression is by making the burden fall on the queer person; by labelling them with this idea of what happens to the self when you repress it (i.e., you become a murderer, is sociopathic, etc.), we are contributing to the villainisation of queerness, subconsciously labelling us as immoral simply because of society's repression. They usually do not condemn society in the way they wish to, just explaining what could happen if we continue it. As good as this narrative can be, (we have suffered; we do get driven to these things as fallout,) it only adds further subconscious influence that queerness/transitioning IS the monstrous thing…
Leviticus completely abolishes this narrative. Queer people can have a happy ending; they do not need to be punished and portrayed in a negative light to send a message.
I studied queer films throughout history religiously these past couple of years, watching the implications and the ramifications of queer representation throughout the decades of film. I wrote a paper on it and won $1k. (This is not to say I've seen every film; there may be others that compel a queer narrative that shows us in a good light. I am just yet to see it. For instance, in I saw the TV glow, focusing on the horror of NOT transitioning rather than making the act of transitioning the horror in itself, which is exactly the point I'm trying to make: queerness isn't the horror; society is.)
Films such as these do not have happy endings. If you control the narrative and perception of queer desire, you control the people. Queer characters throughout history don't get those happy endings. They must be punished simply for their existence. This is true in many ways; society has punished us and has killed us. While being a symbol of the events society has gone through, it is not far from the truth, yet it is displayed and written by directors only through the idea of repressing it further; they actively contribute to our negative perception of queerness. If queer people can't witness a happy ending for themselves on screen, they do not think it possible for them. Thus, the media enables the narrative. The Hays Code has done irreparable damage to the way we view and write films, especially queer ones.
Until this movie.
This film contains the beautiful symbolism of all these years of queer film, the haunting monsters we've seen ourselves in. The violent, monstrous nature that is associated with our queer desire, yet explores it in the most beautiful, wonderfully representative way. Queer film and the gothic horror narrative go hand in hand. We see the monster as us; we are told to believe this monster was inside us, leading us to feel this way. I have never seen the monster be depicted as something else entirely. The physical form of repression, of everything the church and conversion instills within queer people. Naim and Ryan are not the monsters. They have never been the monsters, yet they are still seen as them. Literally taking shape and form of each other, a mirror to the narrative that movies have fed us all along.
The idea of the church bringing about a monster, for it to take shape and form of queer people, the literal embodiment of society believing them to be immoral evil monsters. I’ll die. It's fucking insane. This is so much more well-written than films I've seen that aimlessly try to follow along with the nature of queerness and the consequences of repression. It's so much more than just the horror; it is a direct response to queer narratives being punished in so many subtle, simple ways. This is the first film I've seen truly break out of the Hays Code, defying everything it stands for. It allows other queer films no excuse for enabling repression.
I truly do love films that feature queer characters as the monster, simply because I can analyse critically how the directors enable the code and continue it from its abolition in 1968. I view it all analytically; it's what I wrote my paper about. It proves how much society fears queerness. Proves they still want to create the subconscious narrative that queerness is immoral. It's a very common theme, and I can see how appealing it is. I find it appealing. I think the intense desire and repression of emotion and love enabling people to become murderers, showing that through horror or the depths of despair of our humanity being stripped away, definitely highlights the trouble with repression. Yet it still contributes to this idea that queerness is inherently immoral. What we see on screen has ties to how we view it in everyday life. It's exactly why the Hays Code was instilled in place. They did not want stories of interracial marriage, trans people, queer people or anything out of the heteronormative norm to be depicted in a good light, lest others realise that it was okay.
What this movie does is feature the nature of repression, the horrific, decaying soul of violent desire wanting to consume you and become the monster, but it doesn't have the main queer characters be immoral. They are not at fault and were never at fault. They are the byproducts of a heavily religious community hell bent on blaming them for everything.
I will go on about every aspect of this movie done right.
The desire for violence as intimacy: men are unable to explore their love and physical affection for each other until they physically harm each other, of their violence, the narrative they're told to be, to hurt and be roughed up, and the intimacy of being so close to each other, flailing on top of each other. Toxic masculinity, the idea that they are not supposed to be gentle, supposed to hurt and hurt. Unable to love each other.
The jealousy, people dobbing in others to save their own skin or simply because of heartbreak, knowing the consequences (but not the harmful extent), and the pain of it all leading you to do something so irrational, putting them in danger since they hurt you, shows how many consequences and injustices queer people have to face. While a heteronormative relationship finding out about the other cheating may have some social consequences (although, there used to be very few, because of misogynistic ties.) For queer people, with what should be just a hurt mistake, an outburst, actually becomes the harm and death of a queer person. The monster is society, leading them to death after their existence is discovered.
Others around them, exploring the different sides of hatred that queer people experience, blaming you for 'turning someone gay', and acknowledging that none of these people, despite thinking Hunter killed himself, ever realised it was because of their own actions. That their hatred and religious, puritanical views on love is what killed him. The metaphor for his suicide (reflective of suicides being what some queer people feel are the only option for not being able to properly express their love in a society with their friends and their family) and the reactions of his sister and his father, blaming other queer people for 'enabling' and 'introducing' it to him instead of accepting their own fault.
Naim's mother – I fucking hated her. She did not care for him, not even about looking out for him. She knew exactly the fate he was going to receive and believed it justified for him to be punished in such a way. It actually healed me seeing this narrative on screen and not the typical narrative of motherly love and concern and care she had for her child who just wanted him to 'get better'. She had no remorse; she had no care for him as a person in the end. She never cared for him once she found out exactly what he was. I can acknowledge that it is the repressive mindset of the church, her own grief distorting into bigotry. Yet she still never cared for him. And we need to see this on screen. SO many films justify the actions of those who caused harm. We never see the baseless, helpless, senseless argument that those who hurt queer people didn't intend to. Everyone in this film was out to get them and thought it completely justified in their hatred. It shows the actual true nature of how a lot of queer people have suffered. They are hated, hunted, and haunted simply for their existence.
The actual romantic nature of their love.
"I don't want it to look like some other dickhead. I want it to look like you."
A line so perfect – I have never felt so much personal care for a romantic relationship within film. I feel like a lot of movies, when focusing on them being a romance or having elements of romance, are just the eventual build-up to that idea. (Hence why films that may not have been written to be a queer love story feature so much more intense, personal connection – the constant asking of 'what if'.) In my perspective, a lot of the time romantically driven films do not explore the characters external to the relationship itself. This may be somewhat true in Leviticus; we can only witness a snippet of their lives surrounding each other. But it is precisely their love and the dismissal of it, of being told to be torn apart, of denying the romance in the first place, of wanting to be separated, of trying to be treated and converted, of seeking the repression itself, and, despite it all, not being able to avoid each other, because they are in love with each other.
"It's what they want... they want us to be scared of each other."
The sexual themes within it, fumbling through adolescence and hormones and teenage desire in third spaces, unable to experience love in the public eye, the mill, the bus, the bathroom. Queer people historically were unable to express sexual desire and had to do so in secluded, known places – cruising, cottaging – meeting up in bathrooms with signals so that they could even express affection.
Mental health issues: the poor girl at the hospital, stuck living life by herself surrounded by so many people since she cannot run from it. She does not have her other half; it is the consequence of forced silencing and running away from your truth. She is miserable, wants to harm herself simply because she cannot change who she is. And unlike Ryan and Naim, she cannot live side by side with who she loves, because societal repression had killed her.
I jokingly said to my friend halfway through the movie (with what little lighthearted spirit I had left) that their solution was simply codependency. I also managed to guess the whole thing with lighters, but what struck me was when we saw them on that bus together at the end, with the relief of groups of people as they stared into each other's eyes, knowing that it was fully, truly them, seeing them decide to stick together. Isolated, but together.
At first, I believed that Naim had gotten rid of his monster, of the 'thing' that would end up killing him. I felt horror, genuine horror, as we watched Ryan pass by in the scenery through the window. I cried. I broke down in sobs. They get their happy ending, yet the metaphor, the importance of this film, is that despite them being together, despite all they have suffered and gone through to get to the other side, society, the monster, the religious guilt and repression and all of it will never truly go away.... killed me.
That is how you do queer narrative right. You can explain the injustices we still face today; you can acknowledge the pain and the hurt and the suicides that still happen; you can leave us with the knowledge that it still plagues us and haunts us to this very day, the recognition of how queer people see the monster as us, but you can also provide queer characters who are not equated with immorality. Are not actually monsters. This movie shows us who the monster truly is.
It is not Ryan or Naim. It never was.
As I will always do, I will relate this back to my favourite movie Like Minds (2006). This movie coming out exactly twenty years on from Like Minds, featuring the same narrative about queer repression and what happens when you don't allow yourself to experience your truth and the extent of your desire for another, and the similar surroundings and environments both of these movies are placed being functionally the same, yet they tell two completely different narratives. The monster being queerness in Like Minds - having the two characters equated with immorality simply through their inability from societal and religious repression to be unable to discover their feelings for each other, and then having the director deny them their queerness in the first place... and in Leviticus, the monster being the repression of queerness and its consequences… with the director allowing the characters to be openly queer and receive a happy ending.
We have grown so far. I have so much hope. Looking back at the years of suffering queer people have gone through; the subconscious repression and fixed narrative we have been led to believe about ourselves – that there is something fundamentally wrong with us, that the monster is forever us – and seeing the barriers of this narrative being completely broken down, 20 years on from a movie such as Like Minds, It brings me to tears.
Happy pride month. This is for all the queer people we have lost; we've come a long way.
