1320 The Crying Game

[Finch]

Neil Jordan’s emotionally stunning international sensation overcame the barriers between independent and mainstream cinema to become one of the defining films of the 1990s. Set against the turbulence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, The Crying Game is a puzzle box of a film, examining complex questions of loyalty, desire, and identity as it traces the fraught relationship developing between two wounded souls: Fergus (Stephen Rea), a former Irish Republican Army member tormented by guilt, and Dil (the revelatory Jaye Davidson), the enigmatic girlfriend of the hostage whose death haunts him. As the film shape-shifts from political drama to noir-tinged thriller to bruising romance, what emerges is something beyond genre: a profound and indelible vision of human connection across all boundaries.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Neil Jordan, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Audio commentary featuring Jordan
New interviews with Jordan and actor Stephen Rea
Making-of documentary from 2005 featuring interviews with Jordan, Rea, and producer Stephen Woolley
Alternate ending featuring audio commentary by Jordan
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: Essays by film critics Tasha Robinson and Willow Catelyn Maclay

New cover by Sara Singh

[Lowry_Sam]

Glad to see this come before a Mona Lisa upgrade. Too bad the music videos weren't included, even though they weren't directed by Jordan they do feature Jaye Davidson, who unfortunately seems to be completely neglected in the extras. Hopefully The Butcher Boy is in the pipeline too!

[brundlefly]

Holding on to my BFI for now as the clip and shots on Criterion's site look a little yellow.

[beamish14]

Really wish Jaye Davidson would do a new interview

Bring on Angel or The Butcher Boy, finally

[pistolwink]

I remember some observers at the time, and for a while afterward, claiming this film is transphobic (before that word was part of common parlance). The fact that Criterion solicited an essay from a trans woman suggests that there'll be a nod to a revision of that reading. I haven't seen this in > 30 years so I can't speak to it myself.

[therewillbeblus]

I saw this pretty young, but I remember thinking the first half hour with Whitaker was absolutely fantastic and the rest of the film, once the plot kicks in, was a letdown

[jazzo]

I saw it old and felt the same way!

[The Curious Sofa]

I remember some observers at the time, and for a while afterward, claiming this film is transphobic (before that word was part of common parlance). The fact that Criterion solicited an essay from a trans woman suggests that there'll be a nod to a revision of that reading. I haven't seen this in > 30 years so I can't speak to it myself.

Although gender non-conforming, Dil is never identified as a trans woman in the film, just as Jaye Davidson never identified as a trans woman in real life. A non-actor, he was cast because he presented like he does in the film, and he now presents as very masculine. Neil Jordan also never intended the character to be a trans woman.

Like many gender non-conforming gay men in the UK in the '80s and '90s, Dil was more along the line of British singers and club kids like Boy George, Marilyn and Pete Burns, just to name the famous ones.

[colinr0380]

Whitaker also makes an opening act appearance as the absconding Army Doctor in Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers the year after this, which feels very close to the way his role works, structurally speaking, in The Crying Game.

On the sexuality aspect, I think the big criticism was probably the 'rush to the toilet to vomit on uncovering the truth of the situation' moment, which along with the lengthy mystery element to the film on its initial release could arguably be seen as a bit of a gimmick. And it seems that this aspect was played up even more in the US release of the film. It probably did not help (or maybe it did from a marketing perspective!) that this was released very close to the 'controversy' over the bisexual killer of Basic Instinct causing protests amongst the Gay community. (And it inspired a small trend in the following years of Hollywood trying to get their minds around the subject to more or less success with films like 1994's Color of Night)

Though I think it is to the film's great credit that after that initial 'shock' moment, the film treats its relationship with sincerity and sympathy. Interestingly in direct contrast to the IRA stuff, which begins to seem broader and more action-thriller generic (Perhaps consciously so, with its novel twist there being a female leader of the faction, who in some ways is the representative of the 'real' woman taking on a masculine role in an organisation, but as a representative of such is ironically the element that this particular film is the least interested in, and is therefore narratively doomed) as things reach the climax.

Of course, Neil Jordan would later go on to revisit an actual trans character even more centrally with Cillian Murphy's character in Breakfast on Pluto.

[thebatman97080]

In case anyone was wondering about a release in the UK, Mifunefan on the other forum asked BFI if they planned to release a 4k and they said no.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=24

[Zot!]

Neil Jordan also never intended the character to be a trans woman.

It's pretty irrelevant, other than Jordan was having fun with the audience and presenting someone they might be unfamiliar or have preconceptions about as a realistic and sympathetic character. The main point is that Stephen Rae's character is a naif with a golden heart, and we could learn from his kindness. it would be stupid and illogical to shoehorn in a sexual conversion. I can't help but think Jordan was riffing on the Kink's Lola.

[Beloved Aunt]

Hmmm, the BFI release has a Jane Giles commentary (doesn't it?), and yet I think I remember hearing round these parts that Neil Jordan doesn't want scholarly things on releases of his films? And Criterion haven't seen fit to include any such thing on their Jordan releases either, unfortunately. I sort of wonder if the BFI can just override Jordan's wishes, or something.

[GaryC]

Hmmm, the BFI release has a Jane Giles commentary (doesn't it?),

I've just checked my review and it doesn't. The commentary is by Jordan. Giles does appear in the fifty-minute making-of documentary though, as she is the author of the BFI Modern Classics book on the film.

[Beloved Aunt]

Oh really? I would swear I've seen a listing for it somewhere, but I guess the commentary was scrapped.

[PfR73]

That commentary is on the Umbrella release from last year.

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

As a trans woman, it’s pretty obtuse to declare that Dil is not a trans woman.

[Matt]

As a trans woman, it’s pretty obtuse to suggest that Dil is not a trans woman.

We didn’t have that phrase in our everyday vocabulary back then. Even if we did, wouldn’t it be up to Dil to decide and declare a specific gender identity? I’m not trying to come at this with hostility, I just don’t think we can make any assumption with certainty.

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

I changed my word choice from “suggest” to “declare” before anyone had responded to me because what I’m really taking issue with is the certainty that she’s not a woman — or that accessing the social role of a woman is not what she’s trying to do. I’m not offended by the suggestion there’s something different that is going on in the film, but I am by the assertion she’s authoritatively not in pursuit of being a woman. I have seen the film numerous times and the portrait of her is extremely important to me as an image in cinema of trans womanhood — which yes is a partially (not entirely) anachronistic term but is historically legible nevertheless.

[Never Cursed]

Haven't seen this yet, but the comments in this thread are literally the first suggestions I have ever heard in all the discussion surrounding the film I've seen that Davidson's character is not a trans woman. The character is introduced as another's wife, right? I also don't think it matters what the directors intended or claim/claimed to have intended (which can work in the opposite direction, as while it's a valid one, I don't particularly buy the reading that The Matrix is about being trans because the Wachowskis say it is, for instance)

[The Curious Sofa]

Until the 1960s, gay men lacked any sort of representation, and it was not until the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s that we had any positive representation on a larger scale. Until then, we simply had to make do with identifying with female characters in romantic scenarios. Therefore, if you have lacked representation as a trans woman, it is perfectly valid to identify with Dil as a character close to being trans , certainly more so than gay men identifying with substitutes like Joan Crawford or Judy Garland. However, when the film is accused of transphobia, which it frequently has, then it's worth pointing out that there is no valid proof that Dil is trans, especially in light of British gay history of the period.

[The Narrator Returns]

Here’s a recent interview with Jordan where he’s specific on this matter, that “trans” wasn’t the language he thought of Dil as at the time but that’s 100% what she is in the modern understanding. I’m not going to comment on some of the ideas expressed in this thread (mostly by one of the people here) except to say that if you think you know more about this than Willow Maclay, you are seriously mistaken.

[The Curious Sofa]

I'm also still not convinced Deckard was a replicant.

[The Narrator Returns]

Anyway, I came to this having already seen almost every other Jordan and in that perspective it’s another in a long line of fascinatingly queer and trans movies from him. You know Breakfast on Pluto but maybe not In Dreams, his gorgeous, woefully misbegotten stab at, among many other things, the Tranny Serial Killer movie with Robert Downey Jr., or his Bob le Flambeur remake where an actual transfemme bodybuilder is a part of the heist team.

Jordan is a director with a fair bit of frustrating tendencies to go with his incredible strengths, this is no exception and one of many Jordans sent off-rails by a strange third-act jump into genre. But it’s a very sincere and emotionally intelligent movie through the difficulties, and radical in more than the obvious way. Miramax had to commit to disgusting othering in their marketing because otherwise they’d have to stand behind the movie’s loud and clear message of “touch a penis and get the fuck over yourself.”

[CSM126]

If nothing else (and there is so much to say about this film), the scene where

Spoiler

Dil is forced to masculinize her appearance to hide from the IRA

has always read as very much affirming her trans identity. She’s obviously disturbed by the experience and is only too happy to

Spoiler

retransition

at film’s end.

But even aside from that she just reads as a woman to me. Nothing about her initial appearance performing at the club reads as a drag show. Of course, those among us who are trans would have far more insight than I do, but yeah. Dil’s just a lady.

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

The film ends with a reiteration of the scorpion and frog narrative from Mr Arkadin, a parable about the essential qualities of beings that are unchangeable even if they are ultimately to our detriment. That this parable is retold

Spoiler

in a sequence where Dil returns to Fergus dressed as a woman following his force-masculinzation of her is telling. The film seems to be designed to be nebulous, an ouroboros akin to its inspiration, Vertigo, since is the essential character of Dil that she is a woman or that she is "not a girl", just as Scottie's recreation of Madeleine in Judy is after all a true recognition of the Madeleine that Judy performed.

Also telling is the fact that when

Spoiler

he cuts her hair and dresses her in men's clothing, it's not any man's clothes, it is Jody's clothes, the male lover who Fergus is almost attempting to revive. Jaye Davidson does a fantastic job of making Dil seem out of place in these clothes, wearing them like a woman wears her boyfriend's oversized sweatshirts. It's also telling that Dil must wield a metaphorical phallus in the form of a gun when she kills Miranda Richardson's character. The film is ultimately overdetermined, and the climactic killing is less clearly the vengeance of a homosexual masculinity that Dave Kehr argued it to be in his contemporaneous review than a hodgepodge of that, return of the dead (Dil is dressed as the martyred), a racialized vengeance. Of course this is all Vertigo.

Lastly,

Spoiler

whatever adjectives we want to attach to gender labels, when Dil visits Fergus at work the day after he finds out about her genitals, he says, "I kind of liked you as a girl," and she replies, "that's a start." She lives her life stealth. She responds to Fergus's wiping away her makeup with, "Do you like me even a little bit?" I can't imagine a world where Dil, as a character, would appreciate being called a type of gay man even if her creators think of her that way.