I have very little idea of what it must have been like for mature, professional gay men in the rigidly structured society of North America in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Here in Cannes to-day, like the western world in general, gay men and women go about their business as fundamentally unobstructed as the rest of us. I see evidence of this each and every day and it is heartening to conclude that, at least here, we progress! But, oh my, it sure wasn’t always like this.

A late afternoon stroll along the Croissette.

In my own family, there was a deep secret held so strongly that I didn’t know the truth until just a few years ago. This very sad truth is that my uncle, who was a prominent and handsome and distinguished lawyer lived in the twin northern Canadian communities of Port Arthur and Fort William – combined population of about 50,000 – was a homosexual! This part of Canada, known as the "Land of the Sleeping Giant," is perched between the edge of Lake Superior to the east and the great wilderness to the Northwest, a wilderness that stretched through the Arctic, and eventually to Russia.

Married to a beautiful, charming, and ultimately a gracious and compassionate woman, he came to an understanding of his sexual proclivities only after much confusion, guilt and shame.

He was the favorite relative of mine and it saddened me so much when I finally was told why he shot himself – the truth telling came much later after I, as a very young man, discovered his body in his snowed-in cabin beside a silent and frozen lake one bone-chilling winter morning. His suicide came after, in to-day’s parlance, he had been threatened with being “outed” if he accepted his appointment as a judge – his career’s crowning achievement.

Cabin beside the lake.

The facts and conditions surrounding the taking of his own life were, of course, covered up and he was buried, with all attendant ceremony, in the sacred ground of his Catholic Church.

What an unnecessary, tortured and false life he must of led in that era of the moral straight jacket! My uncle was a wonderful and admirable man who was known for his kindness, gentility and professional acumen.

So much waste! And an end that had to be lonely, full of despair and shot through with demoralization. 

This all came to mind to-day as I sat on the beach in Cannes in June of 2007 – a time and place so removed from that icy and dreadful morning when I found my uncle – dead from a self-inflicted gunshot to his head. This day, I see what I would might guess are gay men enjoying the fine weather and beautiful beaches of the Cote d’Azure either on holiday or working at their jobs – exuding “élan” and “joie de vivre.” They are not “trapped” as so many once were.

The movie – “House of Sand and Fog” stars Ben Kingsly, Jennifer Connelly and Shohreh Aghdashloo who won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress.

Movie Review:

House of Sand and Fog

Directed by Vadim Perelman, Based on the novel by Andre Dubuss III — Dreamworks 2003
Starring: Ben Kingsely, Jennifer Connelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo

This is a film and a novel about “traps” – fundamentally self-inflicted traps. Vadim Perelman, in his directorial debut, certainly distinguishes himself while expressing these ideas with a fine sense of maturity and subtlety not often seen in the work of the young and less experienced. And the same can be said for the novelist, Andre Dubuss III with this, his second novel as he deftly, and with emotional power, constructs such an intricate story.

There is another popular saying that plays in my head a great deal; taking its side along – “we like to take the softer easier way” (which I referred to in isuue #36 – The Land of the Lotus Eaters). This time it is: “Our troubles are, most often, of our own making!” I’ve tempered it somewhat from the original and probably shouldn’t have but the essential point remains. We certainly don’t like to think that we are the authors of our own misfortune but, in my case, at least, it is true!

In “House of Sand and Fog,” the misfortunes of the central characters are of their own making and we watch them do it to themselves – adding to our sense of anguish and horror as the seemingly inexorable events unfold with terrifying plausibility.

I don’t want to discuss the complicated narrative structure of the film but what has always struck me upon each viewing of the film and reading the novel is that we all live in traps, not unlike that of my uncle’s – even though much of that trap was self-imposed – his unwillingness to accept his homosexuality and its effect upon his career aspirations, given the tenor of the times.

In “House of Sand and Fog,” we have a flaky, alcoholic heroine (Jennifer Connelly) losing her house due to a sloppy and careless lifestyle while the protagonist, Colonel Behrani, late of the Shaw’s Iran, buys the house in a tax sale as his ticket to the redemption provided by respectability – a respectability demanded by his wife who does not really comprehend their fall from grace and exile to the United States.

These traps cause false hope, bitter anger and finally, hopeless despair. And the traps are familiar – as Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune says, “You feel you not only know these people but where they come from.”

The action of the movie is punctuated by a series of beautiful shots of time-lapsed fog rolling in from the sea, over the shore and inland. My first reaction to this book-ending was that it was clichéd and weakened the film. But, as the action plays out, this technique quickly asserts itself for me as a way of placing in high relief the foolishness of the players as they struggle with their ideas of revenge, grandiosity and disappointment against the majesty of the universe and our planet.  

I believe that much of the power of “House of Sand and Fog” (aside from its superb acting, screenplay and technical expertise) lies in its ability to penetrate to the bottom of things leaving us as aimless, frightened creatures scrambling over one another within and over a majestic landscape that some would call God’s.

For not the last time, I’ll drag out Professor Northrop Frye to, once again, remind ourselves that “the story is us” and that these scrambling, hysterical creatures are us – as we puff out our chests, threaten and cheat our fellows, hatch one stupid scheme after another until we fall, exhausted – sometimes dead!