When a panic attack hits, you lose control of your heart, which beats like an overheating engine while you sweat and your vision blurs. But that’s not the worst part, because you also can’t control your thoughts in that moment. Are you dying? Have you failed yourself, your loved ones, your community? Why did you make every decision that led you to this moment of pain, and how could you have avoided it? Will you ever do what you were meant to do, be who you truly are? When the panic comes, you question your entire identity in a wretched moment of self-sabotage.
In I Am Michael, a biopic of Michael Glatze, panic attacks lead a 20-something gay rights activist to become a gay-identity-denying Christian pastor. After a health scare, doctors reassure Michael (James Franco) that he has not inherited the heart condition that killed his father when he was 13. So what caused his problems? Was it the sudden move from San Francisco to Nova Scotia with his boyfriend Bennett (Zachary Quinto)? Was it leaving behind his editorial job at prestigious gay magazine for administrative work? Was it leftover grief over losing both parents before he had celebrated his 20th birthday?
The film is based on a 2011New York Times Magazine article by Benoit Denizet-Lewis (renamed “Bennett” for the film). Director Justin Kelly isn’t interested in asking why Glatze renounced his sexuality, leaving behind two live-in boyfriends (Tyler, played by Charlie Carver, joined the two lovers as a third partner soon after their move to Canada). The film instead examines the aftermath of Michael’s choices, for himself and his loved ones.
Real people may be difficult, even impossible to define, which is why we have stories. But stories require sturdier logic. By simply depicting the panic attacks Michael experiences, Kelly prevents the film’s effective ending from being more powerful. This is especially unfortunate because the movie, takes the position that Michael is lying to himself and others about his conversion to heterosexuality.
Michael’s former lovers insist that he is hurting them and the gay teens who used to look up to him by writing such hurtful nonsense, denying their orientation because people are “born heterosexual.” Still, there is a wealth of empathy for his crisis of identity. The director and star wittily deconstruct the standard tale of a hero loving out his convictions. Michael breaks his delusional façade, eyeing a shirtless male friend, unable to consummate a one-night stand with a woman, all while the lines around and under his eyes deepen and harden under the stress he places on himself . Yet he only retreats deeper into his righteousness. But no matter how far down he buries it, that thing that makes Michael, Michael will always be there, nagging at him. I Am Michael tells a powerful story of identity. If only we had gotten to know its central figure, and his reasons for his radical denunciation of himself, just a little better.
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