When you think about the way AIDS has been portrayed on screen, the stories seem always to be centered around death, despair, and heartache that was all too real to too many. The new indie “1985,” however, seems to have a glimmer of positivity in the darkness.
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The “1985” story centers around a closeted young man, Adrain, played by Cory Michael Smith (known for his work on “Gotham“), who goes home to Texas for the holidays and struggles to reveal his dire circumstances to his conservative family. Smith told Entertainment Weekly the story is “more about family and the secrets we keep to protect each other” than it is about slathering the gay experience in doom and gloom. Adrian’s optimism in the face of his impending death leaves a little glimmer of hope for his brother who is presumably also gay.
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“I feel like this is a film about a lot of Americans that we don’t get to see in a lot of films that deal with the AIDS crisis, which often center more around activism or medical drama, but don’t really take a magnifying glass to middle-American experience,” Smith explained.
Written and directed by Yen Tan who is best known for his film “Happy Birthday” also spoke to EW about his decision to shoot “1985” in black and white. “It’s the idea that the issue of AIDS was a black-and-white issue and sexuality was a black-and-white issue: it was good or evil, a dead-or-alive kind of thing,” he observed. “In a world now where sexuality is being seen more on a spectrum, which is wonderful, this takes us to a time when things weren’t so fluid, or your individuality was relegated to this or that.”
Starring alongside Smith is Jamie Chung, Virginia Madsen, and Michael Chiklis. “1985” premiered at the SXSW Film Festival earlier this year and is set for limited release on October 26, 2018.