The minute someone finds out you're gay, your life is over. That seems to be the message writer/director Yan England is sending with 1:54.
The film opened in Los Angeles the very same week as Love, Simon. The plots of the two are remarkably similar: a closeted high school boy is blackmailed by a scheming classmate under threat of exposure; he capitulates to the blackmailer's demands but is exposed on social media anyway, and becomes a pariah to the entire student body. But while Simon lives in an artificially shiny-happy world where diversity of all sorts is accepted and encouraged, 1:54 plays out in a just-as-implausible homophobic nightmare world evocative of decades long past, where the mere hint of anything gay brings scorn, ridicule, persecution, and an eventual, mandatory death sentence.
This story might be relevant if it were set in Guatemala, Turkey, or Iran but seems grossly inappropriate for present-day, suburban Montreal. Same sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously marched in Toronto's gay pride parade. Yes, high school bullies still exist, and some gay kids take their own lives as a result. But North American high school and college athletes have come out as gay in record numbers in recent years, and nearly all have enjoyed the strong support of their teammates. Meanwhile, poor Tim of 1:54 is beset on all sides by a mindset that gay means girly, and homos have no place in sports; when his sexuality becomes known, his teammates unanimously turn on him, and the epithets and pejoratives fly. It seems England is sadly out of touch with the prevailing attitude of high school kids these days. Actually that's probably a good thing - for the kids.
But the film's biggest flaw is the complete failure to provide Tim with any character growth whatsoever. It's fitting that he's a track athlete because he just goes round and round in circles. Over a timeline that covers an entire school year he's bullied, witnesses the suicide of his best friend, finds acceptance through his athletic success, is blackmailed and then outed in a most spectacular fashion, crashes his car, receives the support of his father, his coach, and a trusted friend... and never changes a bit. He's a sullen, withdrawn, self-loathing loser at the beginning of the film, and while the audience is teased now and again with a glimmer of hope, he's still a sullen, withdrawn, self-loathing loser at the middle of the film, and remains so all the way to the end.
Tim does nothing to defend either himself or his friends. He refuses to stand up for himself or take charge of his life in any way. His bold decision to confront his antagonist - "Fuck Jeff!" - is abandoned the instant it looks like there may be a negative consequence. At no point during the film does he either accept himself or even admit to himself that he is indeed gay. All this serves only to alienate the audience. Any sympathy we had for Tim is long gone by film's end, transmuted into frustration at his uselessness, and anger at England for subjecting us to this pointless exercise in self-pity, ending of course with the traditional 1980s-cliché death of a gay man.
Maybe the most telling indication of how completely the film misses the mark comes after Tim's sexuality is exposed to his classmates. His father and his coach quickly petition the school board to take Tim out of school and allow him to finish the term at home, without even asking if he'd rather go back to class and deal with the fallout himself. Apparently they intend to save him from public disgrace by hiding him from sight, like a pregnant girl of the 1950s.
Love, Simon got wide distribution, was a hit with straight as well as gay high school audiences, and played at major theaters around LA for two months. 1:54 played on one screen in all of LA for a single week, and was seen by practically nobody. I think distributors and audiences made the right choice.
And as long as I'm dumping on the film, here's a few more things I couldn't ignore:
Who is the guy who gives Tim a blow job? At first he seems to be a drunken hallucination of Tim's dead friend Francis; if they weren't played by the same actor, I sure couldn't tell. I didn't know until they were caught in the act whether he was real or a fantasy - but since he was in fact real, and apparently another classmate, why wasn't he ridiculed and harassed as Tim was? After all, he was the one on his knees...
How does Tim score an invitation to compete at the Provincial Championships, without running in a single track meet since age 12? Is Quebec that hard up for high school athletes?
I groaned when England used the tired old device of having the stadium announcer call the race as if he's a TV play-by-play commentator. This never, ever, ever happens in real life but is somehow considered obligatory in the movies; have filmmakers never attended an actual sports event? Moreover, it's essentially a two-man race, we're already very familiar with the competitors, and there aren't many intricacies to be explained in two laps around the track. If England thinks he needs a narrator to provide drama, he must not have much faith in his skill as a director.
With 200m left to go in an 800m race, it is completely implausible that the runner in second place would expend the time and energy to taunt his opponent; by the time he can blurt out, "Look at what Pat's doing over there," he's lost the race. And it's even more implausible that the lead runner would listen and be distracted enough to look at a guy on the sidelines. An 800m race is an all-out endurance sprint; at the 600m point there's absolutely nothing in your head except making it to the finish line. In terms of plot, it was unnecessary - Tim could have won the race or Jeff could have beaten him fairly without changing the rest of the story. It only provides England one more opportunity to drag poor Tim through the mud, which he seems compelled to do at every turn.
When the video of Tim's blow job is posted online, his teammates see it instantly. Because they have nothing better to do than play with their phones when they're competing at the Provincial Championships.
Finally... I can't help but notice Tim's two homophobic bullies are the girliest-looking guys in the film. Especially the main antagonist Jeff, with his flowing locks pinned up on his head to run his race; he looks absolutely queenish alongside the very butch Tim. I can't tell if this is intentional irony, or if it's some hopelessly misguided Quebecois notion of what the "cool kids" look like.
The film opened in Los Angeles the very same week as Love, Simon. The plots of the two are remarkably similar: a closeted high school boy is blackmailed by a scheming classmate under threat of exposure; he capitulates to the blackmailer's demands but is exposed on social media anyway, and becomes a pariah to the entire student body. But while Simon lives in an artificially shiny-happy world where diversity of all sorts is accepted and encouraged, 1:54 plays out in a just-as-implausible homophobic nightmare world evocative of decades long past, where the mere hint of anything gay brings scorn, ridicule, persecution, and an eventual, mandatory death sentence.
This story might be relevant if it were set in Guatemala, Turkey, or Iran but seems grossly inappropriate for present-day, suburban Montreal. Same sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously marched in Toronto's gay pride parade. Yes, high school bullies still exist, and some gay kids take their own lives as a result. But North American high school and college athletes have come out as gay in record numbers in recent years, and nearly all have enjoyed the strong support of their teammates. Meanwhile, poor Tim of 1:54 is beset on all sides by a mindset that gay means girly, and homos have no place in sports; when his sexuality becomes known, his teammates unanimously turn on him, and the epithets and pejoratives fly. It seems England is sadly out of touch with the prevailing attitude of high school kids these days. Actually that's probably a good thing - for the kids.
But the film's biggest flaw is the complete failure to provide Tim with any character growth whatsoever. It's fitting that he's a track athlete because he just goes round and round in circles. Over a timeline that covers an entire school year he's bullied, witnesses the suicide of his best friend, finds acceptance through his athletic success, is blackmailed and then outed in a most spectacular fashion, crashes his car, receives the support of his father, his coach, and a trusted friend... and never changes a bit. He's a sullen, withdrawn, self-loathing loser at the beginning of the film, and while the audience is teased now and again with a glimmer of hope, he's still a sullen, withdrawn, self-loathing loser at the middle of the film, and remains so all the way to the end.
Tim does nothing to defend either himself or his friends. He refuses to stand up for himself or take charge of his life in any way. His bold decision to confront his antagonist - "Fuck Jeff!" - is abandoned the instant it looks like there may be a negative consequence. At no point during the film does he either accept himself or even admit to himself that he is indeed gay. All this serves only to alienate the audience. Any sympathy we had for Tim is long gone by film's end, transmuted into frustration at his uselessness, and anger at England for subjecting us to this pointless exercise in self-pity, ending of course with the traditional 1980s-cliché death of a gay man.
Maybe the most telling indication of how completely the film misses the mark comes after Tim's sexuality is exposed to his classmates. His father and his coach quickly petition the school board to take Tim out of school and allow him to finish the term at home, without even asking if he'd rather go back to class and deal with the fallout himself. Apparently they intend to save him from public disgrace by hiding him from sight, like a pregnant girl of the 1950s.
Love, Simon got wide distribution, was a hit with straight as well as gay high school audiences, and played at major theaters around LA for two months. 1:54 played on one screen in all of LA for a single week, and was seen by practically nobody. I think distributors and audiences made the right choice.
And as long as I'm dumping on the film, here's a few more things I couldn't ignore:
Who is the guy who gives Tim a blow job? At first he seems to be a drunken hallucination of Tim's dead friend Francis; if they weren't played by the same actor, I sure couldn't tell. I didn't know until they were caught in the act whether he was real or a fantasy - but since he was in fact real, and apparently another classmate, why wasn't he ridiculed and harassed as Tim was? After all, he was the one on his knees...
How does Tim score an invitation to compete at the Provincial Championships, without running in a single track meet since age 12? Is Quebec that hard up for high school athletes?
I groaned when England used the tired old device of having the stadium announcer call the race as if he's a TV play-by-play commentator. This never, ever, ever happens in real life but is somehow considered obligatory in the movies; have filmmakers never attended an actual sports event? Moreover, it's essentially a two-man race, we're already very familiar with the competitors, and there aren't many intricacies to be explained in two laps around the track. If England thinks he needs a narrator to provide drama, he must not have much faith in his skill as a director.
With 200m left to go in an 800m race, it is completely implausible that the runner in second place would expend the time and energy to taunt his opponent; by the time he can blurt out, "Look at what Pat's doing over there," he's lost the race. And it's even more implausible that the lead runner would listen and be distracted enough to look at a guy on the sidelines. An 800m race is an all-out endurance sprint; at the 600m point there's absolutely nothing in your head except making it to the finish line. In terms of plot, it was unnecessary - Tim could have won the race or Jeff could have beaten him fairly without changing the rest of the story. It only provides England one more opportunity to drag poor Tim through the mud, which he seems compelled to do at every turn.
When the video of Tim's blow job is posted online, his teammates see it instantly. Because they have nothing better to do than play with their phones when they're competing at the Provincial Championships.
Finally... I can't help but notice Tim's two homophobic bullies are the girliest-looking guys in the film. Especially the main antagonist Jeff, with his flowing locks pinned up on his head to run his race; he looks absolutely queenish alongside the very butch Tim. I can't tell if this is intentional irony, or if it's some hopelessly misguided Quebecois notion of what the "cool kids" look like.