Chris & Don: A Love Story

I stumbled upon this documentary on the Sundance Channel and the name Don Bachardy sounded familiar to me so I began watching. Then I realized that he was the artist who authored a book called "Stars In His Eyes" that dealt with many famous film personalities that posed for him. Each actor/actress had their portrait sketched and he wrote interesting details about the experience of setting up these meetings and how the sittings went.

So I watched, and discovered that he was Christopher Irsherwood's lover since he was a youth, meeting the writer when he was an unformed adolescent and quickly becoming his lifelong companion. It's a touching documentary, detailing the closeness of their relationship which began in the Hollywood of the 1950s at a time when discretion had to be uppermost in the minds of anyone contemplating a same sex relationship.

Bachardy was fascinated by the many well-known people that Irsherwood's associations included--everyone from Montgomery Clift to Julie Harris to Leslie Caron--and quickly became a part of that world when Irsherwood sponsored his education as an artist. Later, he would be doing portraits of these famous people and have his own opening at a gallery.

But the story deals mainly with the intensity of their close relationship over the years despite some difficulties due to their age difference. However, I found some of Bachardy's choices rather morbid, such as the endless fascination with sketching the dying partner during his final months, again and again.

Bachardy himself does much of the narration and ends by saying that he's reading Irsherwood's diary from the back toward the beginning because he can't wait to get to the part where they first meet.

Make of it what you will--it's all there for the viewer to ponder.

I know nothing, before see this documentary, about this relation. But it was not so surprising remembering the novel A Single Man and its adaptation by Tom Ford.

A provocative love story between two men defined by 30 years age difference. This is the premise and it works very little because, scene by scene, in the embroidery of Don Bachardy memories, grace to wisdome of directors and words of guests, footage and the precise- profound inspired definition of levels of relation and biography of both, , the eccentric, presumed , romance , forbbiden, easy to blame, becomes only a beautiful portrait of friendship, education, decisions, crisis , noble decision in tough moment, affection, relation with its ordinary ingredients and image of a form, not so original, of happiness. And, I admitt, scene by scene, myself I was falling in love for Don Bachardy.

At the end, touching works not as the worst word to define this long term relation, impling education, affection, comradery and define of life together.

It looks like we will finally be able to watch this masterpiece documentary in theaters as distributor Zeitgeist has picked up the Miami Festival winner for a limited release. Produced by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, a team of longtime documentary authors whose "Mandala" revealed a few years ago a very sophisticated talent in visual storytelling, "Chris & Don" is the love story between famous playwright Christopher Isherwood and artist Don Bachardy in the golden years of Hollywood, with exclusive interviews and footage with actors and other personalities. Although Isherwood and Bachardy's was a homosexual love during a time when these relationships were looked at with criticism even in the more liberal California, the movie is somehow capable of setting the sexual factor aside and focus instead on the depth of the protagonists' personality. By the end of the movie you feel so intimate with both, that it is almost natural to want to know more about them and their art. A refined, well directed portrait and an opportunity for exemplary film-making that should easily captivate audiences.

On the weekend I recommended this film to friends who had told me how much they enjoyed the film "Christopher And His Kind" (starring Matt Smith). A few days later I realised that my friends are (as with Chris and Don) in a 30+ year relationship, with the younger man facing the impending loss of his beloved through cancer.

So the part of the film which I am worried might be too distressing for them is when Don shares his experience of caring for Chris at home at the end of his life - which was of course extremely challenging, but exactly what they both wanted. I feel privileged to have been allowed such a personal view to this vital act of love - which is an integral part of their story, of lives well lived.

The documentary presents a great deal of interesting material about the life Christopher Isherwood shared with Don Bachardy (and we hear Don's honest first hand opinion throughout). While they were very much in love, it wasn't all wine and roses (I think very few relationships are). Chris wrote "A Single Man" at a time when Don had requested a trial separation and he was not at all confident that Don would return.

Don lives on in the house they shared for many decades and is a duly successful artist (a talent Chris had recognised in him and actively encouraged). The DVD edition comes with several cards of Don's work - including portraits of Chris.

"Chris & Don" is a magnificent testament to the reality of true love and to the value of commitment - and is much more effective in this regard than any other film I've seen.

For how unusual and "scandalous" the love story portrayed in this movie can be (or rather, could have been at the time the facts took place), the way it is narrated by the film-making and producing duo of Guido Santi and Tina Mascara is so sophisticated, gentle and harmonious that it really brings you back to the atmosphere in the most romantic Hollywood movies of the fifties. Perhaps it's because the sentimental relationship between Isherwood and Bachardy was mediated by such an incredible artistic exchange that it elevated their passion to the ranks of a work of art. Or perhaps it's because the authors have wisely elected to look at their love with unpretentious discretion, as if the camera was always attempting to remain unobtrusive enough to ensure the utmost authenticity in Bachardy's moving and vivid memories of their past together. Overall, this touching documentary has bestowed me with a higher feeling of satisfaction than a regular movie as I realised that real love does not only exist in fiction, but occurs, if rarely, in reality. Quite an extraordinary experience in movie-making, this one.