Lovely Chris & Don a Beautiful Story

Chris & Don: A Love Story is the type of documentary that sneaks up and surprises you in ways you just don’t see coming. As simple and as direct as it is, the film resonates far more strongly than you would at first expect, the timeless nature of the relationship it examines enough to make even the hardest heart soften – if only just a little – in sincere appreciation.

Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood in Zeitgeist Films' Chris & Don: A Love Story

The movie follows the three-plus decade romance between noted writer Christopher Isherwood (his Berlin Stories became the basis for Cabaret) and famed artist and portrait painter Don Bachardy (thirty years his lover's junior). Starting in 1950's Malibu these two shared a life together as openly as any you would probably see today, their commitment to one another no less profound or inspiring as any similar straight relationship you've ever heard stories about.

Directors Tina Mascara and Guido Santi do an excellent job of brining Chris and Don’s journey to life. The film includes some never-before-seen footage shot by the pair, uncanny period era recreations and features interviews with actress Leslie Caron, director John Boorman and Sally Bowles herself Liza Minnelli (amongst others). But it is Don himself who does most of the heavy lifting, the filmmakers allowing the diminutive painter with the squeaky voice tell his own tale, the most startling and emotionally effecting moments coming straight from his own mouth.

I must say, this is a pricelessly moving documentary. There is an ethereal timelessness to the pair's love story that really forced me to look again at how I personally view relationships between people, and for anyone that thinks gay marriage can't work or is some sort of genetic impossibility I herby give you two men who, not only prove that statement wrong, did it decades before California would even remotely considering it proper, let alone constitutionally legal.

Admittedly, the thought ran through my mind more than a couple of times that this film wouldn’t have been made had the two individuals been male and female. More, as brave and as profound as the pair’s achievement was it almost goes without saying it couldn’t ever have happened had both of them not been living in Hollywood. Mascara and Santi tend to gloss over these facts almost nonchalantly, the picture containing very few mentions of some of the hardships the duo must have had to endure in regards to their open sexuality.

Still, it almost goes without saying that looking at a film like this can broaden a person’s horizons and open their eyes to the possibilities love offers. Commitment isn't easy, but if these two could do it in an age when they could have severely harmed (or worse, killed) it actually gives me hope that I can someday maybe do the same in my life. Theirs was such a timelessly emotional bond of connective rapture I couldn’t help but become a little bit jealous of their bliss.

But it is how they endure the tough times that really crystallizes just how pure Chris and Don’s attachment was. Death raises its ugly visage here (and, with over three decades separating the pair how could it not), and seeing the latter come to grips with it in his recollections and his shatteringly emotional art work is powerfully devastating. This is where the film soars, and by the time it was over it was this final third I just couldn’t get out of my mind. 

Chris & Don: A Love Story has a lot to say but it doesn’t work at all hard to actually do it. There is simplicity to the history it tells, a delicate nuance that defies easy explanation. Which is pretty much the same thing you can say about love itself, the almost mystical influences it exudes upon us all as timeless and as eternal as the one shared by two brave men who didn’t even realize how heroic their heartfelt actions of almost matrimonial-like bliss really were.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Interview with Directors Guido Santi and Tina Mascara by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  2008 SIFF Blog by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  2008 Seattle International Film Festival Home Page
-  Chris & Don: A Love Story Theatrical Trailer