IIt may be the case that many of us are still floating around in our good-natured intoxication and eager to feed the heights as long as possible after a four-year period in a bottomless emotional and psychological pit. It’s not even positivity or hope that we depend on, but the ability to feel something again in normal ways – to grieve, to grieve, to feel everything, from anger to relief and yes, even joy.
Maybe we did not even realize that we had been holding our breath for four years. Only when we exhale do we realize that all these feelings are ready to pour out, the good, the bad and all in between. It’s a lot of feeling to do! It’s exhausting, but also intoxicating.
And the new Justin Timberlake starring in that buzz Palmer, and its themes of tolerance, redemption, empathy and the celebration of otherness.
It is a movie food on a rare and overdue festive season for seriousness, kindness and memories that there are still few sparks of humanity. Palmer as far as these things in the world of art and cinema are concerned, genetically designed to force you to – I mean late you – feel things.
In the film, which appears on Apple TV + on Friday, Timberlake plays a former named Eddie Palmer, who, after serving 12 years for a crime, returns to his hometown in the rural South to visit his grandmother, Vivian (June Squibb, iconic always), who raised him. A single mother (Juno Temple) and her 7-year-old son, Sam (newcomer Ryder Allen), live in a trailer next door. Palmer looks out the window at them, watches the mother and son play with dolls, and raises an eyebrow.
Palmer was surprised one morning to find Sam in the house. His mother takes off – not for the first time – and as she did earlier, Vivian takes him in. They eat meals together and go to church together. Vivian lets Sam do her hair and play with her makeup. Sam is remarkably unaware of his behavior, even around Palmer. ‘You know you’re a boy, right? Boys do not play with dolls, ”says Palmer. “Well, I’m a boy, and I do,” Sam picks up his answers.
When Vivian tragically dies in her sleep one night, it is left to Palmer to take care of Sam. You would think that the two would collide immediately. But Palmer sees the community, both children and adults, bullying Sam over his irreconcilable confidence in himself to proudly dress like a princess and have tea parties with the girls at school. Palmer becomes an uncompromising supporter and defender of Sam, and the kind of father figure a boy so desperately needs.
People, you will never believe it: they save each other.
The best thing about Palmer is that you’ve seen it before. It is Big Daddy, but seriously. It is About a boy, but the boy is gay. I can not talk about how famous the filmmakers, including director Fisher Stevens and screenwriter Cheryl Guerriero, were of this formula, but the film is better not to deviate from it, hitting every famous mate with the precision of the strings plucked. the acoustic guitar score you can only hear when I describe this movie.
It unleashes the tap on all of the above, inflated emotions and lets them squirt with all the power of a firehouse: an avalanche of cathartic appreciation for Sam’s struggle, Palmer’s selflessness and their power to bump the way forward in a cruel direction. society.
You will cry, and you will feel good about it. You will be proud of your empathy and of your alertness. That little boy Sam does not deserve a hard life just because he loves girl stuff and lives in a city full of homophobia! This is a movie that also serves as a pat on the back for his target audience, and therein lies the minor problem.
The messages are irrefutable. To his credit, Timberlake is excellent, a triumphant return to a promising acting career that at one point seemed shaky. Allen as Sam is a revelation. Palmer is so vigilant that you hardly need to pay full attention, and yet you will still reap all the emotional benefits. But it’s this thing where I legally loved a movie that I’m not sure I was happy with.
In addition to the “unlikely parent figure of a lost child”, there is another genre that is becoming more and more well known Palmer belongs to: the emotionally manipulative Oscar bait in which a reformed homophobic turns into a gay savior. In other words, well-meaning films that not so much trample, but abuse, the fine line between human insight and the exploitation of queer pain.
It’s a complicated tension to discuss, and there are no easy answers on how to tell these stories, or even if they are stories to be told.
Although a much better movie, there are notes of Palmer reminiscent of Joe Bell, the Mark Wahlberg drama that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall but was recently moved from the release calendar to a TBD date later this year. There are also echoes of Fall, the upcoming film, written, directed by and starring Viggo Mortensen about a gay boy who calculates himself with his father’s abusive homophobia as his age begins to close the window for closure.
‘It’s a complicated tension to discuss, and there are no easy answers on how to tell these stories, or even if they are stories to be told.”
The two films are emotionally exhausting stories about tortured but evolving relationships between unacceptable fathers and their gay sons, and the scars that lie out of such a powerful bond. They both have the potential to be leading the way in complex conversations about sexuality and masculinity that can help the public very well.
But both films also enter into the conversation about who should tell the stories of those who are marginalized and underrepresented. Nor does it satisfy those who are tired of watching the struggle for queer acceptance raised by direct characters and produced by straight creative teams. It should not discount any of their creative achievements, but it is a worthy consideration.
How does it work? Palmer does the picture go in?
Sam is 7 years old. Obviously, his sexuality is not discussed – again he is 7. But gender identity and expression is at the root of his relationship with every character in the film, and especially with Palmer. Those who attack him are portrayed as adults. But Sam’s journey, though the catalyst for Palmer’s own, is subordinate to it. It’s once again a film centered on the redemption of the straight, cis character.
It itself becomes something of a herd.
Where once the juicy role for a director played the persecuted stranger, it is the character who has a crisis of conscience about their role in the prosecution staff. It’s an evolution in the identity politics of fulfilling strange roles, but it still calls for the value of this kind of storytelling.
There is a suspicion that it feels good when it actually, at least in some respects, does harm. I can not tell you how inspiring it is to see Justin Timberlake play a tough guy who falls completely in love with the acceptance of a young boy who does not meet the gender. It means something – actually – to have a father figure on film who supports a child in this way. But the abuse that Palmer witnesses, and the audience witnesses, does not cause the things that ultimately continue and normalize.
It cannot be repeated enough how complicated it all is. Sam is a heroic character, and it’s so refreshing to see him present with unbridled confidence, regardless of gender norms. But he is also infallible. He is impossible not to love, premature and kind-hearted. He needs to be in order for a story like this to work. Perfection is still needed to balance otherness when audiences go on board.
It’s nice to see how Palmer and different people in the community support and promote Sam’s interest and identity. He has a healthier education than most, who is constantly silenced or corrected or abused. When you are older, outdoors and proud with a support system, you are celebrated by your fascination with divas and princesses and beautiful things. But what if we give the same permission to children, boys? What if there was no illegal play with Barbies, a cause for shame?
These questions are allowed in this movie, but only because of Palmer’s heroic compassion.
The idea of a savior requires someone to save. The lack of agency, even in such a feel-good story as this, is a continuation of the decades of damaging Hollywood troupes in which delicacy and gender identity are used as props.
I have no doubt that if you have come this far in this review, you are a person who will be moved by this film. And I’m glad. It felt nice to watch this movie and feel warm, to feel good about a better future full of Palmers and Sams.
The fact that the film is so easy to like and emotionally influenced is the reason why it is so researched as well. And the most valuable thing it can do is invite the conversation.