The results of the recent postal survey on legalising same-sex marriage has made it clear that the Australian public is decisively in favour of marriage equality.
To celebrate this historic week for the gay community – and the Australian community more broadly – we’ve picked five classic films that celebrate tolerance and LGBT communities.
The LGBT community wholeheartedly embraced Disney’s mega successful, and incredibly catchy animated musical. Here’s what The Atlantic had to say about Frozen:
The culture warriors have decided: Disney’s Frozen is queer. Elsa hiding her ice-powers could be read as a metaphor for the closet, the Oscar-winning “Let it Go” plays like a coming-out anthem, and a character in the film evokes the question of whether homosexuality is a choice by inquiring of Elsa’s powers, “born with it or cursed?” Some liberals have praised the film for its subtext; some conservatives have denounced it.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, Terence Stamp, and in fact anybody who appeared in this movie has never been as fabulous. This cross-country story of three drag queens travelling across Australia stole our hearts (and made us dance). It continues to have an impact to this day.
The website Out.com put it this way:
“Priscilla, with its gaudy make-up, excessive sequins, and camp ’70s tunes defined a decade of Australian cinema and truly opened up the filmic reservoirs for more mainstream and positive representations of diverse LGBT folks on screen. After a successful musical theater revival, and in light of the film’s 20th-anniversary this year, it’s time to turn up the ABBA and return to this cult classic.”
The surprise winner of Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards (who could forget that debacle with the wrong envelope?) is a beautiful and sensitive film, following an African-American man trying to understand himself and his sense of love. This is what Flicks’ Liam Maguren had to say about Moonlight:
“The ability to evoke empathy and compassion from sound and images is a magic reserved for only great films. This is all Moonlight wants, and with the precision of a cinematic diamond cutter, filmmaker Barry Jenkins has crafted a great three-chapter chronicle of a soft-spoken black man named Chiron whose true self is constantly denied by the environment that engulfs him.”
You might not have seen this intimate coming-of-age romance, which has (according to Variety) “the most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory.”
Steven Spielberg said it was “a great love story that made all of us feel privileged to be a fly on the wall.” Flicks’ Dominic Corry said:
“The character arcs are not unique, but the torrent of emotional verisimilitude that flows from the screen is. Seen within a viewing of the film, the sexual aspects don’t feel particularly gratuitous, their intensity justified in the context of the film’s epic (successful) push for feeling.”
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were unforgettable as gay cowboys in director Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning film. Many words have been written about this very special movie, but we reckon one of our readers hit the nail on the head:
“Whats makes it so moving is how the movie stays with you after you’ve left. It’s an amazingly tragic love story; the best I’ve ever seen. Heath Ledger’s performance is superb. Worth all the praise it’s received.”
