Was the bath scene a subtle indication that at least one of the two characters have homosexual feelings? Was Bonnie Prince's character simply trying to help his friend relax? And what about the quick shot of the skinny dude's wedding ring hand slowly submerging into the water? What's that all about?
Any input is appreciated.
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I agree with pagula - these two had something going years ago. But apparently Mark is bisexual, so he chose the straight path. I didn't find him particularly likable, in fact, I thought he was quite joyless and boring compared to Kurt, he just seemed to be going through the motions. With that ugly wife, who can blame him :)
I had a slightly different take. Mark seems like the type of sensitive, progressive, "I love you so much, man. To bad I'm straight,' guy who actually is. He's always been aware of and 'completely cool' with Kurt's feelings, but I don't think anything ever happened between them. I can relate to this from the personal experience of usually being the token homo in a circle of hetero-hipster friends. After enough little remarks, looks and the occasional drunk make-out session, you can be pretty sure that the guy really is stringing you along to an extent, but with a little space and perspective you realize it's not what you want it to be, it's not out of a conscious desire to be cruel but it is out of a need to keep the flattery coming.
Kurt's 'something's changed. I wish it was like it used to be,' speech puts up a red flag. What's changed is that Mark isn't flirting with him anymore. Like you said, he seemed joyless and a bit uptight. I think he felt that, with a wife and a baby coming, their old days banter would be inappropriate. He was uncomfortable and holding back what Kurt invited him on the trip looking for.
One other thing that made me think they never got physical was Mark's 'What are you doing!' when Kurt started to rub his shoulders. He still might have turned him down, but if they ever had been together, if there had been a precident, he would have known what he was doing. He wouldn't have been that caught off-guard and he just would said something else.
Pagula, you couldn't have missed more badly. I can't even bother to set you straight. I bet someone else on this thread already has...
It's a shame so many homophobes also happen to be so dumb.
not sure about that gay part. when bonnie kurt oldham touched skinny man (haha sorry)- skinny was kind of shocked like this never happend before. i personally think that a man can love another one like a friend or brother, huging him or touching him without beeing a homosexual...but then again iam european. i think this is much about friendship no matter what happens in their pants.
the relaxing hand just shows how tense skinny is with his new life. oldham still goes to wild parties, jumping over bonfires and still feels lonely.
when they both talk about an old friend. skinny man remembers about some incitant with this old buddy. oldham did not, because his life never changed really from when they where young. things like this incident happen all the time in his life.
for skinny it was a landmark, he still remembers in his now boring adapted
life.
sorry if me english is bad.
very incisive observation about the incident with the old friend, and the way the recall /or not, of that memory, defines the two friends station in life at that moment.
youre english is good, whats your language?
I've never understood why movies with two women are about sisterhood, motherhood, friendship etc... but you have a movie with two guys and it's homoerotic.
shareI've never understood why movies with two women are about sisterhood, motherhood, friendship etc... but you have a movie with two guys and it's homoerotic.
I agree with the last two posts. The reactions to this scene expressed on this site are part and parcel of this country's attitude toward masculinity: Real men don't touch each other, lest people think they are gay--the ultimate insult. While this movie certainly lends itself to interpretation, it seems banal--and somewhat dismissive--to come to the conclusion that these men have a sexual past or sexual feelings for each other. The movie is much more interesting than that.
shareOkay, let's look at male/male non-sexual touching. Masseurs and sports therapists. I guess they're the same thing. I guess that's the ONLY prolonged touching allowed to maintain a heterosexual reputation.
Okay, so yeah, if you're an American het man, man/man touching is GATEWAY activity, therefore VERBOTEN. I'm gay, and even I understand this part of uptight US culture.
Hear hear. The body language and speech of these guys prior to this scene and after betrays that they were nothing but old friends gone different paths. At the beginning remember Kurt was meditating, trying to get himself to relax within a life of hectic metropolitan life. Mark, on the other hand, does nothing but relax and self-medicate. He lives in a hippy world-frame where people aren't hung up so much on personal space and rigid social norms - thus he sees it as perfectly acceptable to give a fellow male - and oldest friend - a massage to get him to relax a little bit.
Kurt's getting uptight because they're not making the trailhead according to some time-table. Mark sees the greater point of them just getting out together.
This is 2007 - you don't have to hide homoeroticism. If two guys had a gay thing at one point in their past, and if the story had anything at all to do with that, then it should show it. If in fact there was supposed to have been something in their past I would say the filmmaker failed to make it mean anything.
If there was nothing in the past, then the massage scene may have clouded up things unnecessarily. Real male friendship is a deeply uncharted subject in today's narrative arts.
"If in fact there was supposed to have been something in their past I would say the filmmaker failed to make it mean anything"
If the filmmaker meant to hint at something in their past, she seems to have succeeded, not failed. After all, half the people on here got that impression.
As for this:
"I've never understood why movies with two women are about sisterhood, motherhood, friendship etc... but you have a movie with two guys and it's homoerotic."
If you show two women bathing nude next to each other, then one starts massaging the other, it's quite likely it would come off as homo-erotic.
In almost any situation, one naked person rubbing another naked person is going to have some kind of sexual, or in this case homosexual, implications. Why are people afraid of ambiguity?
Why are people so defensive about questions being raised as to whether there was a homosexual element to this movie? No one has passed any judgment on the film. It seems like those asking the questions (myself included) want to know wtf is going on. Because this film is so observational, and, in the words of the director it "let's you bring your own baggage to the film," (e.g. you're associations with the film's characters). Whether this film "works" for me has a lot to do with how well I can identify/understand it. The majority of us aren't homosexual, so with the very ambiguous hot tub scene serving as the, uh, climax of the film, it's only fair to question what the director was intending. I can't see anyone who made it all the way through this film having a problem with probing into the depths of sensitive male friendships... I think the crowd this movie appeals to is one that can appreciate (probably better than most) the delicate nuance and powerful emotions that exist within human relationships, whether they be gay, straight, bi or otherwise. However, by leaving the homosexual question unanswered but strongly hinted at, (notice the shots right after he "relaxes," they're of water dripping off a wooden pipe followed by a foamy white pool of water), I felt this gave the film a bit of a disingenuous quality. If you're going to go there, go there. If not, don't nudge and wink. It doesn't seem to work in a movie that absolutely hinges on the viewer being able to identify with characters and their various emotions. It has NOTHING to do with my (nor seemingly other's) nonacceptance, stereotyping, or prejudice regarding homo/bi/heterosexuality.
sharetyboulder:
I completely agree with you, but I still can't see how the scene can be percieved as having any homosexual connotations. At least not if you factor in the rest of the movie, and the context of the scene. They are there to relax, and the point of the climax isn't homosexual (at least not when considering how the narrative of the movie is up to that point), it's social. So, if there was any homosexual tendencies to discuss, I'd gladly do it, but I simply can't see them. One guy is giving another guy a massage. It's at a hot spring, and he's trying to get him to relax, unwind, and forget about everything. That's the whole point of the movie. Getting Mark to let go of the stress he has in his life now, having chosen an «ordinary» life, with all that it entails.
Giving the characters a homosexual background wouldn't really change anything, so for me it would be superfluous fluff if the writer/director had intended it. I mean, so what if they had a gay relationship in the past. That's not what the film is about in any case (for me that is, if someone has detected a complex gay story in there somewhere, I'd like to know). It just seems so... strange, that people have to focus on these sort of things. For me it has no real relevance other than showing that they are/were close, and I fail to see why it should matter beyond that.
"In almost any situation, one naked person rubbing another naked person is going to have some kind of sexual, or in this case homosexual, implications."
Only the guy in the tub was naked. The other guy had gotten out and put his shorts on right away to smoke.
"If in fact there was supposed to have been something in their past I would say the filmmaker failed to make it mean anything"
"If the filmmaker meant to hint at something in their past, she seems to have succeeded, not failed. After all, half the people on here got that impression."
So if a lot of people think that Luke and Han had a thing going on the side does that mean that Lucas "succeeded" in hinting that they in fact did? I think this is more of a case of a few viewers mistaking a "discovery" of a supposed homoerotic reference in popular entertainment as a genuine intellectual achievement. Film reviews are littered with them, but rightly so at times - it has become a hackneyed substory in some films, such as in Hostel 2.
I am not questioning that some people got an impression, I am questioning that there was in fact a hinting. While that is arguable, I fail to see that if in fact it was a hint, that this particular assertion of a past sexual entanglement really means something, or jibes in the context of the whole film. Cut that moment out, or adjust it so that it doesn't appear so homoerotic (say with all their clothes on, in a bar or something, a friend giving a friend a shoulder rub), and the character arcs and the story stand as just the same: it's about two old friends who get together and find that they can never be the same friends as before. I challenge that if in fact they had an ongoing sexual relationship sometime in the past their interactions would have been totally different, and Mark would probably not have gone out to the woods with him - Kurt would have been an old boyfriend, not a friend. That's a different story than was played out here.
But I will say this- many heterosexual males, usually when single, form friendships that are like marriage, to a degree, that doesn't have to involve any sexual attraction for one another. They live together, see each other naked plenty, talk about anything, laugh and cry and help each other out, money is no object, what one owns is the other's (the point of the "mind if I sleep in your tent" line, in the past Kurt would not have had to ask), give each other massages, all without actually wanting to have sex. In fact the total disinterest in that form of intimacy allows for a unique bond. Most of the time these relationships end or radically change with some amount of sadness when one or both form sexual marriages with women.
That's because everyone KNOWS that all women are bisexual.
sharei really think a homoerotic undertone is a superficial reading of this. maybe a quick glance would give one that impression. i really think it was about finding peace.
as far as the hand falling and it being the one with the wedding band. i think that was a big part of the tension, a wife a child the stress and pressure that come with that. watching it submerge waswatching that pressure ease for a bit.
when bonnie prince billie gets dropped off skinny immediately goes back to listening to air america where they are ranting about the struggle of having a family in the us. you can see the tension mount.
anyone read the book? maybe it was more explicit there.
I didn't really get any homosexual connotations out of the bath / massage scene. It crossed my mind at the time, but I left it. It seemed to me a lot more that Kurt was just a slightly hippyish character, really natural, and while it briefly made his pal a little uncomfortable, Mr. Skinny then thought about who he was with, trusted him, and relaxed. Just my take, of course.
share[deleted]
I didn't perceive that they had any sort of past sexual history. As others mentioned, Mark seemed initially shocked and surprised, as if they were treading into entirely foreign waters.
Also, I think it's a bit naive to pretend there was no homosexual tension in the scene. Clearly, that tension was part of what made Mark so initially uncomfortable.
I myself was a bit confused about the lowering of Mark's hand. Was he merely relaxing his grip on the tub? Was this a mere symbol of his letting go?
OR was he moving his hand down to get a hold of "something else?" The scene was immediately followed by some rather explicit and vivid imagery-- lots of dripping water, gushing water, white, foamy water. Don't pretend like you didn't notice!
in the least kurt is the type of person who sees nothing sexual about the massage and mark is the average guy who is uncomfortable with it which makes sense. HOWEVER as the person before me said, the wedding band shot and shots afterwards make it naive to not consider at least one of them might have sexual desire. i wouldn't go as far to say that they had sex though. as it's been said perhaps they flirted in the past and now mark is distant and maybe resentful to that.
share