The Crying Game

Love and marriage, what we used to think of as a binding relationship between a man and a woman, is today all mixed up in about as many relationships as one could imagine. And films and television are now no longer afraid to show two women kissing, or two men kissing. People are now coming out of the closet as fast as the closet doors can fly open. Love is now more complicated than it ever was. I’m reminded of a film I saw over twenty years ago, a film that impressed me not just for the surprise ending, but for the honest questions it raised about the nature of love . . . between two people regardless of their sexual orientation. I guess I needn’t worry about any spoilers in this one since most everyone around at the time this movie came out would know the surprise ending.

The Crying Game is the story of the Irish terrorists who seize a black English soldier as a bargaining piece for one of their captured buddies. The soldier, Jody (Forest Whitaker in a very early role), who is supposed to be shot by one of his captors, is accidentally killed trying to escape, and Fergie, the terrorist who had befriended Jody, goes to England to try to make it up to him by seeing if the soldier’s girl friend, Dil, is getting along all right. What an off-the-wall love story. But what a good film. Dil turns out to be a man in drag, but only after the Irishman, who now goes by the name Jimmy, has fallen in love with her/him. It just goes to show that love can come in many forms. For all of us who assume that homosexuality is somehow deviant, this film may have prompted us to look at the relationships between men and women in a somewhat different light. Is Jimmy, now in love with a man who he first assumed was a woman (and a very attractive woman she/he was), a homosexual? Or is he just a person who fell in love with another person, regardless of physical genders? Very confusing, because the viewer is totally sympathetic to both characters; they’re easily the most likable people in the movie. Ten years after I first saw this movie, I rented it and saw it again. I noticed things about the film I hadn’t seen the first time. They opened with a rendition of “When a Man Loves a Woman” and concluded with “Stand by Your Man” as Dil is seen visiting Jimmy in prison, where he still has about seven years to go on his sentence. She will wait for him and they will be together thereafter. Or maybe not. Also, I saw the irony of the bound Jody’s comments to Fergie when Jody had to urinate and Fergie had to open his pants for him and take out his “piece of meat” as Jody called it, and then reinsert it after Jody was finished. It’s all very complicated, but I’m so glad we’re now approaching a time when we can accept the complexities of love and marriage and sexual relationships.