THE HANGING GARDEN
Canada, 1997, 91 minutes, Colour.
Ian Parsons, Peter Mac Neill, Troy Veinotte, Kerry Fox, Mark Austin, Joel S. Keller, Sarah Polley
Directed by Thom Fitzgerald.
The Hanging Garden is the first feature film of US-born but Canadian director Thom Fitzgerald. He was to go on to make the spoof of gay modelling in Beefcake and a number of dramas including Wild Dogs and Three Needles. His 2003 film, The Event, treated the issue of AIDS, death and assisted suicide.
This film won twenty awards at different festivals, especially in Canada, but also the Critics’ Award in Portugal.
The film focuses on a young boy who was fat in growing up in a difficult household. After he leaves home as a teenager, he stays away for ten years and then returns. Fitzgerald is a gay director in gay themes. His hero returns as an adjusted young adult. However, he falls foul of the intensity of the pressures in his family and this threatens to disrupt his life.
Fitzgerald himself won several writing and direction awards. He creates an interesting portrait of life in Nova Scotia, a blend of the realistic and the surreal. He has a number of interesting cast, especially Kerry Fox and Sarah Polley, who had international careers.
Fitzgerald would consider himself as a significant contributor to films which deal with issues of homosexuality.
1.The title, its significance, focus?
2.The locations, Halifax: the homes, the coast, the community? The musical score?
3.How well did the film work in terms of realism and linear plot? The wedding, the return, the flashbacks?
4.The surrealistic aspects of the film-making: the past and the present, Little Willie, teenage, the hanging? Real or not? The sequence of the dog and the burial?
5.Willie’s perspective, little, the teenager, the adult? The visual presentation of these phases?
6.The importance of colour, the flowers, moods, perspective? The introduction about the flowers, the months? The recurring images? The hanging garden and the flowers dying? Names and Nana and flowers?
7.The impact of the credits, the father? The bashing – and love? The tone? Ten years, skills with flowers?
8.The wedding and its mood, the comedy? Cutting? Rosemary and drink, raucous? Fletcher, Dad, Violet, the guests, Mother? Willie and Gran? The ceremony itself? The music and afterwards?
9.Iris in herself, the marriage, everything just so? Patient, the photos? Iris’s interaction with people, with Violet, Gran, Dad, Willie? The flashbacks – and patient, loving? Fletcher, Dusty, Rosemary? The truth about Violet? Getting Dad to bed, checking how he was? With Willie – love, leaving?
10.The father, the garden, his demands, violence and drunkenness? Iris gone and his being helpless?
11.Rosemary as young and tough, marrying, dominating Fletcher? Her mother and Violet? Gran and her devotion to the Blessed Virgin?
12.Fletcher, the lap dancer, sex, not phoning? Marrying? Sex at the end?
13.The grandmother, Alzheimer’s and its effect? With Iris, dancing with William, in the house, Mac, seeing the sexual behaviour, praying the Rosary? Shopping? Her suffering and the blood?
14.The portrait of Willie, as little, the fat teenage boy? Hiding and awkward? Hitting? Fletcher and sex? Dusty and the aftermath? Leaving home? Going to the city, his sexuality, waiting? The jingles? Singing for Iris? Meeting Violet and the interaction? His arrival after ten years? Dancing with Gran? Helping his father, love? His mother gone? The search and the police? Violet and the truth? Fletcher and leaving? Burial, the hanging, the little boy being there?
15.The police, their action, dysfunctional?
16.Violet, her character, interactions with people?
17.The dramatics of the plot? Melodramatics? The portrait of a family, abuse, love, endurance? Sexuality? Illness? Freedom?
