A Good Movie

I feel like maybe The Kid Are Alright is an important film.

Before going into that let me just say why it is a good film. This is a movie made with clarity and attention and diligence. Its characters are expertly drawn. There are no villains and yet they are all villains. There are no heroes and yet they are all heroes. There are moments of heartbreak. There are moments of real heartbreak.

I think this movie might be important because, really its not important that the protagonists are gay. Like, this is a movie about a gay couple without being a gay movie. Maybe this is really semantic of me.

Whatever. Thats the feeling I got. This is a movie about some people who find themselves in a difficult situation. Its not about gay people. The people in the movie happen to be gay. I think that thats an important moment in our culture.

Less importantly, or maybe more importantly, this is a movie which is unabashedly about the middle classes, about liberals, about trendy suburbanites. In that way it sort of reminded me of Jonathan Franzen's novels.

I think that its very difficult for people to make movies which aren't self-conscious about being familiar with these people. Which is strange because I imagine that most people in the movie industry come from this demographic. I think its interesting. Maybe movie-makers won't feel that they have to be Mike Leigh anymore. Just in the same way, perhaps, that Will Smith felt like he didn't have to be Paul Robeson.

I don't know if I'm being melodramatic, maybe I am. I certainly thought it was an interesting movie. I also think maybe its an important movie. I have been wrong about these things in the past.