QUEER - Mark Reviews Movies

Queer, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 27, 2024

Whatever's going on with William Lee (Daniel Craig), the protagonist of Queer, might not be for us to know. Director Luca Guadagnino's movie is based on a novel by William S. Burroughs, a writer whose own private life was quite—to put it mildly—a mess, and its story of a writer who escapes to Mexico to more freely explore his sexuality and also maintain his drug habit might be autobiographical to some degree (The real Burroughs was more or less stuck in Mexico after killing his wife with a pistol—an accident or an "accident"). From the movie, who can really know for certain? After experiencing this hazy movie, who could really care, either?

As presented by Guadagnino, the story here exists on its own, separate from Burroughs, as well as, in certain moments, from reality and even time. Our first introduction to Lee, as everyone calls him, is of images from various mattresses, showing plenty of books and full ashtrays and drug paraphernalia and rows of guns, accompanied by an acoustic cover of a Nirvana song. The story itself is set in the 1950s, but jarringly anachronistic music, some of it pre-existing songs and a lot of it the dissonant score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, fills the soundtrack. Is the notion that Lee is somehow ahead of his time or that his state of hidden uncertainty, insecurity, and constantly searching for meaning is timeless?

Such questions don't seem to matter much to Guadagnino, who certainly does create some striking moments amidst the many questions with which this character study leaves us. One features "Come as You Are," another Nirvana tune, as Lee wanders the streets of Mexico City at night in slow motion, stops to note a cock fight in the middle of the street, and finds his gaze stuck upon a stranger who caught his attention at one of the many bars he spends his days and nights frequenting. Nothing about the music fits the era or the character as we know him (Unlike the lyrics, we know for certain that Lee does have a gun, which he wears in a hostler), but somehow, the dissonance works in the scene, because Lee exists in a state of dissonance.

According to his own words, Lee is not gay or, as was the wording of the time (and has returned again, in a more positive act of reclamation), "queer," although he does spend a good amount of time admiring other men as much almost as much as he drinks in those bars. He'll even bring the occasional man to a hotel room, where he doesn't seem to care about receiving any sexual gratification but is eager to offer it. The guy has plenty enough to keep him satisfied, apparently—from his stacks of books, to all the booze he consumes, to the heroin that he keeps in a kit in his apartment.

Things change with the sight of that stranger, though, a man named Eugene (Drew Starkey), who keeps a clean-cut appearance and spends time with a particular woman. However, Lee's friend Joe (an unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman), a fellow expat with bad luck picking sex partners who won't steal from him, says Eugene is a regular visitor of local gay bars, even if there's no obvious sign he has interest in men the way Lee would hope.

All of this becomes the strongest section of Justin Kuritzkes' screenplay, because it's simply observing Lee in his routine, habits, boisterous personality, and mystery. Craig's performance has a lot of off-kilter charm to it, as Lee plants himself in these bars and puts on a show to make his presence known, but when the character is on his own or in those intimate moments in those hotel rooms, there's a sense of pain here that goes deeper than whatever he thinks about or tries to deny about his sexuality. The man is an addict, to be sure, drinking to excess—to the point that he doesn't even seem drunk most of the time—and numbing himself with heroin when he thinks it's required. Any potential source of this behavior is anyone's guess—maybe even for Lee.

Eugene becomes a new addiction for the man, as Lee finds out where Eugene goes regularly, spends more time with him, and eventually asks the man back to his own apartment. The result is sort of a romance, but if Lee feels like a cypher even after spending so much time with him, Eugene becomes an inscrutable puzzle to him. He must solve it.

The rest of the story feels aimless, too, although in a less compelling way than watching Lee exist in an intentionally aimless condition. Lee keeps trying to get closer to Eugene, who pushes him away—literally in one moment—whenever he does. Eventually, Lee's obsession to figure out Eugene leads the two on a dream-like hunt for a plant in the South American jungle that Lee has heard can create telepathic abilities.

Queer either keeps the protagonist at a distance with its style or uses such flourishes to hide the fact that there might not be as much to Lee, either in this script or more generally. He's intriguing but, ultimately, just a shallowly tragic figure in an equally hollow movie.

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