Beyond the Multiplex

"For the Bible Tells Me So": What would Jesus do? If his son was one of Judy's friends, that is
Whether Daniel Karslake's admirable and moving "For the Bible Tells Me So" can reach across the gaping wound it documents in American society -- between traditional Christian families and their gay sons and daughters -- is a dubious proposition. Karslake does a fine job of approaching his subjects in a neutral, non-judgmental manner, and even when the parents he interviews are having a really tough time accepting their gay kids, he never presents them as demons or bigots. Liberal mainline Christians will embrace this elegantly structured, TV-ready concoction, with its message that the biblical proscription on homosexuality has been misinterpreted, and its focus on healing and mutual understanding. I doubt many fundamentalists will want to see it in the first place.

Of course they should. Two of Karslake's subjects are more or less celebrities: Chrissy Gephardt, lesbian daughter of former House minority leader and presidential candidate Dick Gephardt, and Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire. But in some ways the other families in the film are more critical to its argument, like the Poteats, an African-American fundamentalist family from North Carolina who have never quite adjusted to their daughter's sexual identity, or the Reitans, white-bread Minnesota Lutherans out of Garrison Keillor's universe who have embraced their gay son Jake after a protracted struggle with his coming-out and how it affected their hopes and dreams for him.

In fact, if Karslake's interviews are to be believed, the Gephardts and the Robinsons ought to be nominated for sainthood. Dick Gephardt is a Southern Baptist, although his wife and kids were raised Catholic, which is a double whammy as far as homosexuality goes. But the former congressman insists he was only concerned about Chrissy's welfare and happiness, and within a couple of years of Chrissy's leaving her husband for another woman, the new couple were included on the family Christmas card. Robinson's parents, who attend a conservative Disciples of Christ church in rural Kentucky, had much farther to travel, but their immense pride in their son's achievement simply blew away their misgivings about what he did, and with whom, in the bedroom.

Most upsetting of all is the story of Mary Lou Wallner, a Colorado fundamentalist whose estrangement from her lesbian daughter ends in irredeemable tragedy. Wallner is a composed woman in late middle age who must live out her life amid prodigious pain and regret, and Karslake handles her story with grace and sympathy. As for the film's detour into theological discussions of Leviticus -- yes, homosexuality is condemned as an abomination, but so is the eating of shrimp and the wearing of wool-linen blends -- of course it will convince those with open minds that 4,000-year-old ritual practice should not govern contemporary behavior.

Similarly, families with gay kids all over the country who are already receptive to Karslake's ecumenical message will clasp this film to their hearts, but those who need it the most may never see it.

"For the Bible Tells Me So" opens Oct. 5 at the Quad Cinema in New York, Oct. 12 in Boston, Lake Worth, Fla., Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Palm Springs, Calif., Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco and Springfield, Mo.; Oct. 19 in Athens, Ga., Atlanta, Columbia, S.C., Dallas, Denver, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, Rochester, N.Y., Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, N.M. and Austin, Texas, with more cities to follow.

Fast forward: Cobain speaks in "About a Son"; the police-state nightmare of "Strange Culture"; from the Big Easy to "Desert Bayou"; sweet dreams and "Good Night"
I was worried about A.J. Schnack's "Kurt Cobain: About a Son" before I first saw it earlier this year (at the South by Southwest Film Festival): A biopic with no licensed Nirvana music and virtually no images of its subject sounded like a dubious proposition. What Schnack did have was extensive tapes of interviews with Cobain, compiled by journalist Michael Azerrad for his biography. The two edited those into an approximate narrative, and then Schnack went to the places Cobain lived -- his hometown of Aberdeen, Wash., the precious indie-rock capital (and state capital) Olympia and then Seattle -- to create a kind of impressionistic montage to accompany Cobain's self-narrating life story. There's no voice-over, no talking-head interviews and no home-video band tapes, but you'll come out of this knowing more about Cobain's self-destructive talent, and lifelong depression, than a more conventional treatment could offer. (Now playing at the IFC Center in New York, with more cities to follow.)

Lynn Hershman Leeson has spent a career making films and videos in the San Francisco Bay Area, as a fearless exponent of the crossover zone where experimental art forms meet narrative filmmaking. She hasn't reached much of an audience, which makes the modest national rollout of her fascinating "Strange Culture" a noteworthy event. A mix of documentary, docudrama and metacritical essay, "Strange Culture" details the terrible odyssey of Steve Kurtz, a Buffalo, N.Y., teacher and artist arrested as a bioterrorism suspect after his wife died at home (of a heart attack) and police found biological specimens in their home. (The microbes were nontoxic but unauthorized elements in one of Kurtz's artistic projects.) Kurtz's story is both a terrible personal tragedy and a penetrating case study in the intolerance and paranoia that still surrounds avant-garde art in America. (Opens Oct. 5 at Cinema Village in New York.)

Just one of the numerous odd and questionable events to follow Hurricane Katrina was the involuntary evacuation of some 600 displaced New Orleans residents to Utah, where the largely African-American group was virtually imprisoned on a military base amid the whitest state in the country. Alex LeMay's "Desert Bayou" can't stay focused on this fascinating story and keeps bumping up against larger issues it can't handle. But LeMay's central narrative about two black families who, perversely or not, decide to make new homes amid the Mormons of the Beehive State, is a fascinating and guardedly hopeful tale about race, class, religion and geography in American life. (Opens Oct. 5 at the Village East in New York, Oct. 19 in Houston and Oct. 26 in Salt Lake City, with more cities to follow.)

Jake Paltrow's debut feature, "The Good Night," has an appealing performance by English actor Martin Freeman as Gary, a one-time '80s pop star who is mired in a decade-long depression, and an even funnier one by Simon Pegg as his former bandmate, gone over to the dark side as a hotshot ad executive. Gary starts dreaming about having a lovely girlfriend who understands him and is hot besides (that would be Penélope Cruz, in a near-cameo), since his real girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow) is on his case all the time about being a bum, slob and generally worthless human being. There's a gloomy quality to "The Good Night" I sort of appreciated -- much of it was shot in London, although it's supposed to occur in New York -- but after the initial acerbic setup fades, Gary becomes less and less likable and the movie evaporates into nothing. Family analysis is above my pay grade, but Jake Paltrow isn't doing his better-known big sister any favors here; Gwyneth plays a humorless harridan with an odd brown perm job, and you can't quite blame Gary for pursuing the honeys of dreamland. (Opens Oct. 5 at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza in New York, with more cities to follow.)

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