husbands (John cassavetes, 1970)
Don't believe truth. Just don't believe truth. I'm telling you.
In or around 1970 my Mother saw the John Cassavetes film Husbands and it became her go-to answer if she was ever asked that odious question 'What is your favourite film?'
She passed away in 1998, before I'd seen the film, and watching it subsequently carried a weight that's difficult to articulate. It was important that I saw Husbands but I also didn't want to see it. I created stipulations for myself: I could only watch a high quality version of the film, preferably at the cinema, but failing that the closest possible alternative. This was tricky as the film had no DVD release in the UK for a long time.
Then, in early 2020 the film was released by Criterion in the UK on blu-ray, and I decided to buy it. But it sat there on the shelf, feeling, and being heavy. Ominous. Portentous. Made of stone. And then Karl was diagnosed with cancer.
At that point I knew that I had to watch Husbands before the worst happened to Karl, because it was my last chance to watch a film about a group of men losing one of their own and falling into despair by falling into life before the experience would change forever. The previous weight the film carried around my Mother's passing shifted somewhat, the weight changed, the importance remained the same level, but the parameters were different somehow. And so I finally watched Husbands.
And then Karl passed away a few months after his diagnosis and I fell into despair by falling into life, and then ended up in hospital for a while. These things happen.
And then, once life had regained some semblance of 'normality' again (whatever that word means), I decided to re-watch Husbands, because I knew it would no longer be the same film for me, and it wasn't. So I came here to talk about this. A subtle clue for the different direction I'm following here can be found in the image I've used at the top of the page. Normally these pieces are accompanied by a face looking out at you. But today we're looking at a group of men looking at each other. That's where all this lies.
So, what is it to have a male friendship, to have strong feelings for other men, to be there for each other, while at the same time not really knowing who you are or why you're behaving the way you are? Why are we so often trapped outside ourselves, looking on, like an observer, and utterly clueless as to why we are saying and doing the things we are saying and doing? Who is this person? These are good questions. Samuel Johnson once wrote (or said, I don't know, you go look it up) that He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man, and sure, that might sound like so much entitlement these days, but he was on to something. It's also widely debated exactly what Johnson meant when he wrote (or said) those words. I'm not going to go into what they mean to me, but have a think about what they might mean to you for a while.
Waking up, eating, getting dressed, getting to work, cleaning, cooking, and providing for those you love for ever and ever and ever until your body can no longer continue involves death by a thousand cuts. Yes, this is what it is to be a responsible adult, and yes, this is something we all (kind of) have to go through, but marry this with the general inarticulateness of most men at talking about their feelings and you end up with a pretty good definition of Weltschmertz, which is not a word that we have a good alternative for in English. It's a wistful type of angst, that looks not only at the individual, but also the world around it. That's an imprecise definition, but regardless, it's a problem.
There is a tonic of sorts in being able to be one of a group of men who are able to talk about their feelings together. This was something that Karl and I had, and I truly wish that every man out there reading this has had this experience in their past or present, or will have it in their future. It's difficult to describe. As I said, we don't have the words for it.
Recently I started a lockdown film-watching get-together event with some of Karl's friends and family. We approached it with caution at first: will this work, will this not just feel weird and disembodied? Eh, let's find out. So we ran it. And one by one, the group have got in touch with me after getting together to share that they didn't realise how much they had needed it. How much it had meant to them. Men don't often express sentiments like this, and it was extremely touching to see and hear this.
But I guess what matters most for me is how you carry that inspiration into the rest of your life, into caring for and being there for those around you, and those who need you, and how you continue to be there for other men as a well-rounded human being who listens to and supports these other men in your life, without falling into the trap of playing the role of a given stereotype of what it is to be a man.
I recently saw Thomas Vinterberg's Another Round (2020) and this film communicates the same feeling, creating a blanket of very fine pins that we wrap ourselves in, a blanket of very fine pins that the world wraps itself in, all of us continuing as normal while experiencing an ongoing pain that can be alleviated from time to time. Every now and then. In moderation. And not just the pain of the men at the centre of these stories either, it also spirals out to affect everyone around them.
One of the advantages of film as a medium is that it can be obtuse, open, lacking answers - it can be used to record the experience of life, which is dizzying, joyful, painful, and frequently illogical. You also can't see inside the characters, can't see their motivations or inner-workings - all you can do is observe from the outside, which is what we often find ourselves doing with our own lives, as well as those around us. Think back to the last time you lost your patience with someone, behaved in a way that you found distasteful, unlike your normal self - why did you do that? Hopefully the answer to that question is indistinct. And this is what film can be: an accurate recording of what it is to be an indistinct human.
That's what Cassevetes and his team were going for in Husbands, they wanted the film to show people in a way that they wouldn't usually behave in public. To wear those private/inside faces when public/outside. Because that's what it is to fall into grief, and life, to freefall without a parachute, to be out of control of your emotions and behaviour. That's what it is to be alive. That's what it is to run, to smoke a cigarette, to be close to another human being, to drive yourself to excess, to sing, to smoke more cigarettes, to sit with your own feelings and truly experience them as they pass through you like a wind. That's what it is to be on a train with friends. To run through heavy rain. To do something spontaneous. To meet people you don't know. To go somewhere new. To laugh and cry because you have to, because there is no other option. And all of this is not merely what it is to be alive, it's also what it is to not be dead.
In or around 1970 my Mother saw the John Cassavetes film Husbands and it became her go-to answer if she was ever asked that odious question 'What is your favourite film?'
She passed away in 1998, before I'd seen the film, and watching it subsequently carried a weight that's difficult to articulate. It was important that I saw Husbands but I also didn't want to see it. I created stipulations for myself: I could only watch a high quality version of the film, preferably at the cinema, but failing that the closest possible alternative. This was tricky as the film had no DVD release in the UK for a long time.
Then, in early 2020 the film was released by Criterion in the UK on blu-ray, and I decided to buy it. But it sat there on the shelf, feeling, and being heavy. Ominous. Portentous. Made of stone. And then Karl was diagnosed with cancer.
At that point I knew that I had to watch Husbands before the worst happened to Karl, because it was my last chance to watch a film about a group of men losing one of their own and falling into despair by falling into life before the experience would change forever. The previous weight the film carried around my Mother's passing shifted somewhat, the weight changed, the importance remained the same level, but the parameters were different somehow. And so I finally watched Husbands.
And then Karl passed away a few months after his diagnosis and I fell into despair by falling into life, and then ended up in hospital for a while. These things happen.
And then, once life had regained some semblance of 'normality' again (whatever that word means), I decided to re-watch Husbands, because I knew it would no longer be the same film for me, and it wasn't. So I came here to talk about this. A subtle clue for the different direction I'm following here can be found in the image I've used at the top of the page. Normally these pieces are accompanied by a face looking out at you. But today we're looking at a group of men looking at each other. That's where all this lies.
So, what is it to have a male friendship, to have strong feelings for other men, to be there for each other, while at the same time not really knowing who you are or why you're behaving the way you are? Why are we so often trapped outside ourselves, looking on, like an observer, and utterly clueless as to why we are saying and doing the things we are saying and doing? Who is this person? These are good questions. Samuel Johnson once wrote (or said, I don't know, you go look it up) that He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man, and sure, that might sound like so much entitlement these days, but he was on to something. It's also widely debated exactly what Johnson meant when he wrote (or said) those words. I'm not going to go into what they mean to me, but have a think about what they might mean to you for a while.
Waking up, eating, getting dressed, getting to work, cleaning, cooking, and providing for those you love for ever and ever and ever until your body can no longer continue involves death by a thousand cuts. Yes, this is what it is to be a responsible adult, and yes, this is something we all (kind of) have to go through, but marry this with the general inarticulateness of most men at talking about their feelings and you end up with a pretty good definition of Weltschmertz, which is not a word that we have a good alternative for in English. It's a wistful type of angst, that looks not only at the individual, but also the world around it. That's an imprecise definition, but regardless, it's a problem.
There is a tonic of sorts in being able to be one of a group of men who are able to talk about their feelings together. This was something that Karl and I had, and I truly wish that every man out there reading this has had this experience in their past or present, or will have it in their future. It's difficult to describe. As I said, we don't have the words for it.
Recently I started a lockdown film-watching get-together event with some of Karl's friends and family. We approached it with caution at first: will this work, will this not just feel weird and disembodied? Eh, let's find out. So we ran it. And one by one, the group have got in touch with me after getting together to share that they didn't realise how much they had needed it. How much it had meant to them. Men don't often express sentiments like this, and it was extremely touching to see and hear this.
But I guess what matters most for me is how you carry that inspiration into the rest of your life, into caring for and being there for those around you, and those who need you, and how you continue to be there for other men as a well-rounded human being who listens to and supports these other men in your life, without falling into the trap of playing the role of a given stereotype of what it is to be a man.
I recently saw Thomas Vinterberg's Another Round (2020) and this film communicates the same feeling, creating a blanket of very fine pins that we wrap ourselves in, a blanket of very fine pins that the world wraps itself in, all of us continuing as normal while experiencing an ongoing pain that can be alleviated from time to time. Every now and then. In moderation. And not just the pain of the men at the centre of these stories either, it also spirals out to affect everyone around them.
One of the advantages of film as a medium is that it can be obtuse, open, lacking answers - it can be used to record the experience of life, which is dizzying, joyful, painful, and frequently illogical. You also can't see inside the characters, can't see their motivations or inner-workings - all you can do is observe from the outside, which is what we often find ourselves doing with our own lives, as well as those around us. Think back to the last time you lost your patience with someone, behaved in a way that you found distasteful, unlike your normal self - why did you do that? Hopefully the answer to that question is indistinct. And this is what film can be: an accurate recording of what it is to be an indistinct human.
That's what Cassevetes and his team were going for in Husbands, they wanted the film to show people in a way that they wouldn't usually behave in public. To wear those private/inside faces when public/outside. Because that's what it is to fall into grief, and life, to freefall without a parachute, to be out of control of your emotions and behaviour. That's what it is to be alive. That's what it is to run, to smoke a cigarette, to be close to another human being, to drive yourself to excess, to sing, to smoke more cigarettes, to sit with your own feelings and truly experience them as they pass through you like a wind. That's what it is to be on a train with friends. To run through heavy rain. To do something spontaneous. To meet people you don't know. To go somewhere new. To laugh and cry because you have to, because there is no other option. And all of this is not merely what it is to be alive, it's also what it is to not be dead.