Knight at the Movies ARCHIVES
A Gay Masterpiece:
A Home at the End of the World
7-28-04 Knight at the Movies column
By Richard Knight, Jr.
























Michael Cunningham, the openly gay, Pulitzer Prize winning author of the book The Hours, his second novel, has
written the screenplay for
A Home At The End Of The World, which is based on his first.  A Home
details the arc of the relationship between Bobby and Jonathan (played as adults by current hot stuff Colin
Farrell and newcomer, stage actor Dallas Roberts).  The close-knit 1970s era adolescent friendship of the two
(and their burgeoning sexual attraction to each other) is watched with awe and understanding by Jonathan’s
lonely mother (Sissy Spacek) and then morphs into a brief halcyon 80s “Bizarre Love Triangle” with the addition
of Clare (Robin Wright Penn), the pretend mad hat designer.  Physical and emotional complications of all sorts
ensue.

I haven’t read either book by Cunningham but I did slog through the filmization of
The Hours, the treatise on
Virginia Wolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” with Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.  I detested its smirking
superiority, the dung sounding Philip Glass score that heightened…nothing, the glamorization of depression.  In
fact, I almost missed Ed Harris dropping off the window ledge, because as he sat there droning on, I was looking
over his head, trying to see what was in the next building.

So to say I wasn’t exactly predisposed toward another film based on Cunningham material would be accurate.  
But what I always forget – and then always remember after watching a beautifully acted film like this one – is
that movies that seem to be carved from our own lives can cloud the judgment, blur the instincts.  That’s
especially true, of course, with “relationship” movies.  

Huge sections of the charming, sad and achingly funny
A Home resonated with me like no movie I’ve seen this
year.  Is that because I became aware of my gay sexuality in the early 70s at the same time as Bobby and
Jonathan?  That a key scene features the music of my forever and ever personal musical Goddess, Laura Nyro?  
That I worked in the nightclub-art-“downtown” world in the 1980s, had friends involved in bisexual-friendship
love triangles that dressed and acted just like these three?

Of course the answer is “yes” but does that make this any better than other terrific recent movies about complex
straight relationships –
The Door In The Floor or Before Sunrise – both of which had no personal connection for
me?  I’ve thought about it in the week or so since I saw the film in a packed screening room and I’ve decided
that the answer is no, not better, just more seductive, entrancing.  To say that I have a teenage gayboy crush on
A Home At The End Of The World would not be far off the mark.  It’s like the first week with a new lover and I
can’t get enough of this movie (my friends are sick of me praising it, already).

Stage director Michael Mayer, making his film debut, gets emotionally complex performances out of his three
leads and is off to a good start.  Farrell and Wright Penn, especially, do excellent work.  Farrell’s dark sensual
physical beauty is the perfect cover up for insecure Bobby, the bi-sexual orphan who just wants to please
everyone (and Erik Smith does equally terrific work as the teen-aged Bobby).  Though there’s no full frontal
Farrell (and what healthy red blooded American gay male isn’t going to be disappointed by that) he’s still – to
bring back a preferred 80s term – “humpy.”

Wright Penn has the intensity of many of those pretend zany 80s artsy queens.  She wears Beth Pasternak’s
gloriously outlandish 80s creations (and the equally splendid wigs) with an arch knowingness.  And like many of
the reigning divas of the period she has the luscious body and the aged, determined, granite face (think Tama
Janowitz and Suzanne Bartsch).  Roberts in his first screen role more than matches them but it is Spacek, as his
mother – and then Bobby’s adoptive one – who walks off with all her scenes – as she seems to do in all her
movies.

A note must be made of the excellent original songs by Duncan Sheik and of course the glorious “It’s Gonna Take
A Miracle” by Nyro and LaBelle is a Goddess-send.  This sweet little movie is a bit of a miracle itself.
Family is Where You Make It