Big Eden

Sometimes we find ourselves wandering, leaving home to look for a home only to return to the place we left. Sometimes we find ourselves asking, asking a question when we already know the answer. And sometimes we find it hard to admit who we are, to the people whom we love the most, who knows better than anyone who we really are. These were the conflicts faced by Henry Hart, a successful artist in New York, who remains blind with the more important things in life. 


Directed by Thomas Bechuza
Released: 2000 by Studio Canal
Best American Independent Feature Film plus other awards


Viewing Experience
Big Eden is a gay film. What sets it apart from other gay flicks I’ve seen is the absence of cliché and scenes abundantly present in a queer reel. Carnal desire, flaming passion and utter display of skin, sweat and pumping actions, have become a basic commodity, or bread and butter, of homosexual onscreen portrayal. Try asking someone and mention a few queer titles and ask them what’s the first thing that comes to their mind, I bet it would either be the guy—or the scene.

But these are all absent in Big Eden. The film’s outstanding quality is its non-superficiality, giving more substance to the life as a third gender. It wasn’t also grand, the delivery and storyline is subtle. Evidently, the film was delivered parallel to the world we live in. That the weight of being gay is not with sensuality, but the hardships of multiple conflicts, the hiding, the secrecy, the control, and more importantly—the longing.
It is a recommendable watch. But just to give you a heads up, the characters aren’t like the hot guys that other gay indie films would usually have in their cast and used to sell the film. 


In Conclusion
Bottomline is, this movie isn’t marketed by sex, but by sensibility.

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