Is it fair or accurate to call the 2022 Oscars the gayest so far? Or is it just another gay year in a no-big-deal way?
Obviously the gayest element in the 2022 Oscar constellation is Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog — at once a beautifully composed if slow-moving period drama and a morose and miserable wallow in the psychology of a smelly, self-loathing closet case named Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Most of the film is about Phil wrestling with wanting to fuck Peter (Kodi Smit McPhee), the willowy young son of Rose (Kirsten Dunst), who’s recently married his his brother George’ (Jesse Plemons). Alas, Phil never gets there. Peter, however, “gets” Phil at the end.
The only Dog fucking that occurs is between the fleshy, carrot-haired George and the alcoholic, puffy-faced Rose. This, no offense, is something most of us would rather not…uhm, dwell upon.
The Power of the Dog has been nominated for 11 Oscars. I’ve seen it twice; it’s such a joyful, exciting, life-affirming thing that I think I’ll watch it again this weekend.
And then we have the Oscar-nominated Flee, a Danish animated docudrama film directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. It’s about a gay man named Amin Nawabi, on the verge of marrying a like-minded dude and sharing his hidden past for the first time, having fled his home country of Afghanistan for Denmark.
And then we have two openly gay actors, Kristen Stewart and Ariana DeBose, respectively playing straight women in Spencer and West Side Story….whatevs.
