In as many words: William Wei’s ideally scathing and adventurous adaptation of this novel is ‘Queer’ and was directed by Luca Guadagnino. This is the most unfortunate aspect of this otherwise magical work which is hard to recognize. William Lee (Daniel Craig) attends a dinner with Eugene (Drew Starkey), a handsome man whom he had met while exploring the depths of Mexico City, and there he begins to narrate the story of how he came to terms with his sexual satisfaction.
It’s easy to dismiss Lee as some kind of ersatz wannabe politician, and many have done exactly that. He wears white linen suits, has a fedora on his head and clear framed glasses stuck on his nose and wears a disgruntled look while carrying a trusty handgun which makes him look like the ‘dandy version of a CIA spook’. Of course, these are simply a few of the accessories that depict the complex character of Lee. Yes an insatiable all round player, a drinking addict to boot, who could be mess than anything else; but he does have a cocky demeanor and a wide backside traits of a straight ang. Lee is one of those say a trashy value system. He describes himself as someone who feels the odious pangs of a weakness like ‘desire’.
But let’s put those thoughts aside for now and consider how in the very primitive world Lee describes, homosexuality is almost a taint. Especially, since Lee represents such a completely male image. And he’s such a man who has developed instincts and doesn’t for a moment consider his desires to be a sin. This is one of the factors that have driven him to Mexico City. Lee has no ideas of being a ‘serious criminal’ in a country where people expect one to kill for one’s fix of heroin anyhow. In America that would make him a serious criminal; but in New Mexico, the slum linked cantinas allow you to be who you are a ‘bent warmongering arsehole’.
‘Queer’ is about Burroughs’ quest to make Eugene love him Eugene, whom Drew Starkey portrays, is a Calvin Klein model for the brain behind big, round glasses. In the beginning, Lee sees Eugene through a window in a bar, in a crowd of men watching a cockfight. The clip is classical rigid with Nirvana’s ‘Come as You Are’ song accompanying the footage, it becomes the underground idealization of all events. For us, his first impression was of great tenderness toward Lee. And after such an encounter, it is absolutely strange for him to be out of sorts, as if he has encountered a deity.
It also begs the question of whether even when Eugene is pulling something new from Lee, a part of him is still in Lee’s self already free from the self hatred created in a society subversive towards queer personas. He never hesitates to self identify as bisexual while maintaining his masculinity and expressing his heteronormative traits such as internal hardness or aggression. What places Lee ahead of his times in Queer, portrays him as messily unbalanced, yet an eccentric revolutionary, is his demand of being himself without any changes whatever the case may be.
Daniel Craig, in quite a departure from James Bond, does not have the illusion of being an old William Burroughs who in his later years became a punk figure in the 1980s: the voice is smooth and the fixed intense inconsolable anger is subtle. He incorporates a measure of that scowling Burroughs DNA, yet the vocation of the Burroughs bold, amusing and full of vigor that he is performing is that of the Young Burroughs (this writer was George Orwell’s 1946 age), who had not yet had been to the rabbit hole of highly adapted insanity that “Naked Lunch” became, his cutting guide to the American bedlam, after writing. This is Burroughs before stardom: by definition, and purely on a person, following his limits. He is a stunning and cruel literary dog with a penchant for vulnerability, and Craig’s rendition is undeniably humorous as he is vicious. Screaming something like, ‘Your generation has never discovered the beauty which only a civilized palate can appreciate!’ while drinking tequila and flinging wild tales, he is a nuisance, raucous without meaning to. But that affectionate devil is somewhat vindictive. He is a possessive lover and so tries not to lose the upper hand in every situation, but love with Eugene is all transcending.
Though it is Burroughs’ unfinished book that was written more like an appendage to ‘Junkie’ (1953) but was Murdoch allowing detail on this entire drama including the previously kept screen play Bulat slightly released which was only in 1985, Burroughs chose to remove this from circulation because after creating a name for himself with ‘Naked Lunch’ he definitely did not want to be perceived as exposing,’ Guadagnino, to whom the filmsChanglers and Call Me By Your Name, didn’t allow any room for inter and only a scant narrative exposition on the other hand him a delight or craving as she vehemently articulates Mexico. This movie places Mexico City as much with the provincial Town featured in Orson Welle Touch of Evil with the moreover sleeping dullness of Welles’ Touch of Evil that takes place in Mexico City during the 1950s. He adds more context to a certain segment of the community, Lee, and a few others, the regulars at Ship Ahoy bar, a relatively posh bar and restaurant that Joe, of Joe the rotund, tubby libertine nerd in the comedy, and Dumé, a vicious queen commanding the Green Lantern further inhabiting the hardcore queer side of the bar scene in the area.
What’s Eugene doing at Ship Ahoy? He goes with a female friend Andra Ursuta, although it is obvious that his gaze strays in other directions. Still, it is a temptation he has never succumbed to. This portrayal of Eugene Burroughs was inspired by Lt. Adelbert Lewis Marker, an American serviceman whom the author met in Mexico City. This is contrasted with Starkey’s portrayal, who was more of an attractive mystery. Eugene forms a strong connection with Lee and soon becomes his drinking buddy and his plans to seduce Eugene are made clear. The seduction that happens is characterized by plenty of spikiness, as Eugene, who has been too sheltered for too long, is wooed away from his comfort zone into the queerer parts of the spectrum by a rather predatory Lee. Their first sex scene is tender and sexy, which is heated by snatches of passion. The second, in which Eugene had to submit to a man completely for the first time, was much more of a release scenario.
The first half of “Queer” is a sound and visually entertaining film with a random soundtrack that has elements of rock music which includes Nirvana, Prince and New Order. Lee, who believes he is ‘a man of independent means’ and has family money, does not care about other people and their problems and desires to lead a life of luxury. What we encounter in Mexico City’s queer subculture carries both filth and beauty. The men exchange cruising tales and bitterly fight each other. Such exchanges, however, reveal racial/class relations wherein Lee takes a young Mexican [played by Omar Apollo, the largely unremarkable looking pop star] and gracefully spins his bronze caterpillar necklace with air of a conductor.
Lee and Eugene sleep together but they are not exactly a couple. Eugene seeks his independence, which for him means getting away from the queerness that he has autobiographically. (He’s the sort of guy who goes: What if that was all it just a phase.) So that is the key reason why Lee begins to pursue his other obsession in the first place: going to South America to search for Yage, pronounced yah hey, which is a plant found in the ecodwar jungles that is said to have psychotropic properties. Lee is fixated on the idea of Yage for reasons that are both scandalous and, in a sense, pathetic. He sounds, for the first time, like Burroughs the grandiose paranoid of “Naked Lunch” (which came out in 1959) when he goes on and on about how the Russians, and most probably the CIA, are trying to use Yage for some sort of thought control. But the truth is that Lee is not simply interested in telepathy, he has a more sinister purpose; control, and manipulation of people like Eugene. This is why he requests Eugene to accompany him to the jungle.
In its second half, Queer evolves somewhat into a different genre, a trippy road movie that focuses on the attempting reach out to horizons high up on the importance chain. Now the film, does lose some of it’s pulse, it does sort of drift, which is the case here for sure. But the novel did get him out into the jungle with the promise of Yage, and he still never found it. However, on the other hand, Guadagnino, who, in an excellent example of Burroughs mystique revisionism, chooses to make Lee finally achieve all his goals. Dotsenko and Lee navigate their way through the jungle to Dr. Cotter (Lesley Manville, looking completely different with her matted black hair and filthy teeth) who has been an American botanist for the longest time in ‘research’ over there in the jungle surrounded by snakes and plants. She welcomes them and they Yag’ed a little and had the best of the most bonkers high wire mad cap films ever. Almost as if the film we began watching is about to turn off, one would think this to be the film we were watching.
The feeling of “Queer” evolving into a torpid position comes with braved and contented indulgence which forms another completion of the vision that the film had with Burroughs or queer love a telepathic aspect. An indelible image learned from Lee is “Eugene” will forever remain devoid of the concept of queering himself despite, quite literally, merging with them. The therapeutic intent that is inherent in the last third or perhaps the last segment of the film, “Queer”, has the potential of discomfiting audiences it is likely more discomfitting than all the graphic sex scenes the film depicts. The Chosen have audiences being told a different version of the story in feints and betrayals that most viewers have witnessed in Call Me by Your Name about the promise a queer love has only to wither at the sight of reality. The time during which the last shot of the film, most desired, is breathtaking. One learned that all the narcotics he consumed, the ailments of distorted crusades, the queerness he once possessed, the one missing aspects of Burroughs was the ability to heal from sorrow.
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