This is the finest film ever made to deal with the subject of AIDS. It's a documentary about two men living with and dying of this illness. The film is beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, and incredibly moving. Above all, it is an amazing true love story. Be sure to have a few hankies ready before you watch this movie---you will need them. Extraordinary.
Silverlake Life: The View from Here
1993
Documentary
Plot summary
A documentary about two gay men as they live through their last months of life with AIDS.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
A great documentary
An amazing document
I'm a married heterosexual man with two children, and I don't see how any human being with a heart could see this film and still think that there is something wrong or unnatural about same-sex marriage. Tom and Mark are beautiful and charming as individuals, but the depth and truth of their love so transcends the idea that marriage has anything to do with the sex of the partners that only someone with a heart and mind cemented closed could fail to recognize it. I saw this film when it first came out, and I've seen it twice seen. Though I wept each time, with each viewing I felt more joy as well. This film is one of the reasons my wife and I have taken our kids to the pride parade every year. We want them to know without a doubt that whatever their sexual orientation turns out to be we will always love them just as much. No God worth a second's thought could keep Tom and Mark out of heaven. They will live in people's hearts far longer than the prejudices of our age will.
The saddest thing about this film
The saddest thing about this film is that only 8 people cared to leave a review of it and NO-ONE felt it worthwhile leaving a comment on the message boards.
Made the same year as Philadelphia...the Tom Hanks Oscar-winner... this is the film that people REALLY should have seen and given awards to. There is more humanity, life, love, tenderness and beauty in these two people than in just about any other gay film I have seen... and it is all true.
In order for this to be printed I need to leave a few more lines of text: suffice it to say that anyone who REALLY wants to know what it was like to be gay in the 60's and 70's, and to understand just what AIDS was like before the modern drug "cocktails" allowed people to breathe a little easier... this is the film to see.
Oh, and I will add a personal comment about AIDS. Despite everything, there actually has been a silver lining to all the horror. When AIDS first arrived, it was called the "gay cancer", and governments preferred to "let them die" rather than spend a red cent on research to help save a bunch of fags. Then it became clear that AIDS would also be a heterosexual disease. But the government wasn't ready for that; So when straight people began getting ill too, the only organizations and associations that were available to them were those which had been set up by gays themselves (examples: The Names Project: the quilt memorializing all those who died of AIDS; Act Up etc) The result is that people who probably would never have come in contact with gays in their ordinary lives suddenly found themselves counting on them and needing them, because no other organizations existed. This close contact, in my estimation, is what finally broke down the barriers of prejudice and allowed the straight world to finally accept gays as equals. When AIDS first came on the scene, many of us thought that the straight world would use it as a way to come down even harder on us... and that probably would have been true if straights didn't suddenly become ill too; nevertheless, the strides that have been made in gay liberation - to the point that, as I write this, there are at least 5 countries in the world that accept gay marriage - these gains would probably have taken a lot longer without AIDS to bring us together. It is sad to think that all those people - both straight and gay - had to die before our common humanity became more obvious - but if what I am writing here is true, and I think it is - then there is a bit of comfort to be taken in realizing that all those people did not die in vain.