Ton Joslin shoots footage of an airplane wing, obviously from the viewpoint of a window seat on an airplane. He talks about being anxious about this trip as a gay Californian flying to his home state of Massachusetts. There’s actual snow during Christmas in that state. His apprehensions are normal since he’s flying with a man he at the time would call his companion. That companion is Mark Massi, a man his family only tolerates. And then there’s the deeper apprehensions, ones that are specific to his time. He and Massi belong to the ten percent of gay men in the Western world during the late 20th century whose HIV infections turn into AIDS.
Both Joslin and Massi are seeing the former’s family for the last time. Silverlake Life: The View From Here is the middle installment of an unofficial trilogy with two directors at the helm. Joslin is responsible for the first installment, Autobiography of a Close Friend, where he and Massi discuss their views on being gay. Some of the clips in this installment appear in this one, a documentary showing AIDS as a series of doctor’s appointments. There are also clips of Joslin complaining about having to get Massi soup. It then shows Joslin’s AIDS getting worse than Massi’s and the latter’s feelings about that. All of this exists in analog techonologies that bring a rawness to the images.
The clips from Autobiography give enough levity to Silverlake but keeping those clips to a minimum is a good decision in a documentary where death is at its filmmaker’s doorstep. To paraphrase what I already wrote above, the documentary then uses confessionals of both Joslin and Massi. The latter’s confessionals are especially illuminating because of its obvious personal perspectives. It obviously shows AIDS through his viewpoint, hearing about the times when Joslin wants to be have people around or to be alone. He discusses the deaths of his friends in ways that feels opposite of AIDS documentaries now.
A personal yet strange response is to look for levity even in the most devastating subjects. Sometimes Massi’s confessionals have those moments. Palliative care units provide next of kin books on how they feel while losing someone they love. And Massi deconstructs the words within the book that don’t fit his actual emotions. This is just one of the many moments in the documentary that speak to the specificity of the emotional mark that AIDS left. A mark AIDS still leaves within hard hit communities. Joslin and his ex-student and friend Peter Friedman finishes the film for the former. And he helps capture the freuqence of the rage of two men who didn’t get the chance to grow old together.
Watch Silverlake Life: A View From Here in OVID.
