Ancestors
There are certain things that are impossible to explain to a generation that didn’t live through them. I grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, and I often feel like people younger than me have no concept of how quickly – and how recently – casual homophobia became considered unacceptable. But equally, I wasn’t around for the peak of the AIDS crisis, so my understanding of how extensively the queer community was decimated is limited. But it’s not lost on me the fact that there’s a massive, generation-wide chasm of elders that are just missing, shared community and lived experiences that were lost to the epidemic. It’s not unusual for films about AIDS patients during the 1980s to focus on the isolation they faced, considering how much shame and fear the virus inspired. But where Ancestors thrives is in showing how interpersonal connections are maintained with the three lead characters of the film in spite of the disease.
The film revolves around Beau (Éanna Hardwicke), a gay man in his mid-30s who discovers to his alarm that his friend Tiny (Jack Wolfe) has gone missing, a vulnerable youth with AIDS who he has begrudgingly taken under his wing. As the narrative dips back and forth between the present and the past, we watch the friendship and deep bond between the two men develop, along with their resident aging queen (his words, not mine), played by Rupert Everett. Tiny’s disappearance is a poignant reflection of how quickly men were taken by AIDS – healthy, young, and beautiful one day, then gone the next.
Ancestors offers audiences a hazy look at 1980s London within the gay community. With an abstract, ambiguous timeline, it comes across as dreamlike. In a way, it mimics the deteriorating mental state of someone with AIDS, giving it a feeling of taking place outside of time and space, as though it’s happening over and over again or possibly not at all. The reliance on a non-chronological narrative drives home the fact that this tragedy is not happening to one single person following a conventional timeline, but to an entire community. It has a strong multigenerational component, with different generations of gay men supporting one another with the weight of all their experiences. For a long time, during and immediately following the worst of the AIDS crisis, the queer community was one that effectively functioned without elders, since a generation had been wiped out in one fell swoop. But here, we see the power and strength of these intergenerational relationships as a support structure, how much each has to offer the other – the wisdom of the elder, the strength and stability of the man in the prime in his life, the raw vitality of the youth.
And although the narrative structure of Ancestors is fascinating to watch unfold, it succeeds on the strength of its three lead performances. Rupert Everett treats the dialogue like Shakespeare, savoring each line as he delivers it, carrying with him the burden of watching younger and healthier men fall around him. Jack Wolfe as Tiny is all exposed nerves and open vulnerability as an impossibly young man who needs tending to, each word he utters soft and gentle and terrified. Beau is a little less easy to pin down – he holds his cards close to his chest, reluctant to establish intimacy with anyone in his life, undoubtedly all too aware of how easily they can be ripped from him. Any sense of frivolity has been stripped away from him, replaced by the weight of survivor’s guilt and, as his relationship with Tiny develops, being a caretaker.
Ancestors is lyrical, poetic, and utterly mesmerizing. With standout performances from its three leads and a dreamy visual style that mirrors the instability and constantly shifting sands of living during the AIDS crisis, it’s a love letter to all those who were lost. As it says at the end of the film, there are “no survivors, only descendents,” and we feel keenly the interconnected nature of all those who lived through it, as well as those who came after.
Directed by David Turpin
Starring Éanna Hardwicke, Jack Wolfe, Rupert Everett
Runtime 106 min
Language English