Stodgy and deliberate, the period drama My Policeman might have seemed revolutionary if it had been released 15 years ago. As it stands, the film is the British answer to Brokeback Mountain, depicting a romantic relationship between two men back when homosexuality was illegal. All the emotional beats are familiar, right down to the humiliation and unhappiness these men must endure. Despite the familiarity, director Michael Grandage and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner find genuine resonance because their film has a bittersweet sense of wisdom. It was not so long ago, after all, that gay men lived in constant fear.
The script, an adaptation of a novel by Bethan Roberts, jumps back and forth between time periods. In the late 1950s, we see Tom (Harry Styles) the policeman strike up a friendship with Patrick (David Dawson) and a young woman named Marion (Emma Corrin). Grandage uses the English seaside to his advantage, filming the cliffs and beaches of Brighton handsomely so he can add of tinge of nostalgia to the flashbacks. About thirty or forty years later, an older Patrick (Rupert Everett) just had a stroke, so an older Marion (Gina McKee) brings him home to convalesce, while an older Tom (Linus Roache) keeps his distance. In the flashbacks, we come to see why tensions are so high: Tom married Marion while he was in love with Patrick, and the love triangle ended tragically.
Grandage has to accomplish something tricky here. We can see the erotic subtext – or lack of it – between the three main characters even while they cannot, which means he needs to put us into their headspace. Corrin easily conveys that naivete, as their character is not unlike their interpretation of Princess Diana in the Netflix series The Crown. More importantly, since Styles is not an especially charismatic actor, Grandage uses that quality to his advantage. His stiff scenes with Corrin suggest deep unhappiness, while his scenes with Dawson have a disproportionate erotic charge. Patrick is more upfront about his feels and desire, forcing him to be more aggressive, standing in contrast to Tom’s more shy, conflicted nature. The cumulative effect is not a searing psychological portrait, but a thoughtful examination of the prison the three leads faced.
It is no surprise the scenes with the older actors are not as successful. Roache, McKee and Everett are all fine character actors, except here they are stuck in a familiar situation where advanced age and decades of resentment have curdled their chances for happiness. It is only through reflective scenes, like an older Tom sobbing at two men who are free to be physically affectionate in public, that we feel anything for them at all. The drama of Patrick’s sickness includes dialogue scenes where the actors are not given much to do. Perhaps Nyswaner’s script could have cut down on the flash-forwards, letting a meaningful glance or voice-over do more dramatic work than what his adaptation did instead, giving the film equal time between the past and future.
My Policeman ends with Marion, Tom and Patrick finding some measure of dignity that mostly had eluded them. It is a satisfying resolution, especially for Marion who finally stands up for herself in a way that was too frightening back when “homosexual” and “deviant” were synonymous terms. Like many other films that handle similar material, Grandage recognizes that acceptance and tenderness are what was missing from people who had no choice but to put up metaphorical barriers toward those feelings. Well, that’s not entirely true. They did have a choice. But My Policeman is convincing when it matters, as it puts us in a time where living honestly would be more hellish than the unrealized feelings they had to endure instead.
Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios
The post My Policeman appeared first on Spectrum Culture.