/ 23 March 2012

Christopher and the Berlin boys

<em>Christopher and His Kind </em>is the adaptation of the autobiography by Christopher Isherwood.

Christopher and His Kind is the adaptation for British television of this autobiography by Christopher Isherwood — well, it takes its name and a small amount of its content.

It’s going as the “real story” behind the tales of Weimar Berlin that made Isherwood famous and led to the play and film I Am a Camera, in turn adapted to the semi-musical Cabaret, likewise a theatre piece and a movie. In fact, this movie version of Christopher and His Kind is as fictionalised as any of the plays, films, or Isherwood’s own works of the era, Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin.

This is ironic in that when he wrote Christopher and His Kind in the 1970s, Isherwood was looking back on his own life and literary career, and was more honest and open than he had been able to be in the 1930s. In that book, he worries about how fact is turned into fiction, how each produces its own truth while also distorting it.

He notes what he omitted from the Berlin books as well as from his earlier memoir, Lions and Shadows: mostly an acknowledgement of his sexuality and those of characters such as Mr Norris, though he again creates an apparently fictional stand-in (“Francis”) for aspects of Gerald Hamilton, the original of Mr Norris. Ironically, too, he mentions some real-life doings and sayings of Jean Ross (the original for Sally Bowles) and Hamilton that would have seemed implausible in a fiction.

Call of the wild
Isherwood is clear, though, on why he went to Berlin in the first place, and this is placed upfront in the movie. “Berlin meant Boys,” he writes — that is, Berlin meant sexual freedom, an opportunity to explore his homosexuality in ways his uptight upper-class English milieu made impossible.

The movie brings this aspect of Isherwood’s Berlin adventures to luscious life, compensating visually for what was hidden in the books. It’s like an extension of the “coming out” aspect of Isherwood’s post-war work, though here the movie also has to fictionalise, condense and expand as needed by the drama. Isherwood’s affair with a German here named as Caspar lasts half the movie; in the book, it’s over by page 13.

In the movie, Christopher is soon on to his next passion, Heinz, and from then on it’s a love story set against the Nazi ascendancy — but no mention is made of the other young men (scores of them) Isherwood was bonking at the same time.

In that respect, the movie of Christopher and His Kind feels a tad tidied up, perhaps beyond the strict needs of the drama. But it is highly enjoyable — as a fictionalised adaptation rather than a documentary record.

Matt Smith is good as Isherwood, despite the physical dissimilarity (Isherwood was not tall). Co-stars Imogen Poots (as Ross) and Toby Jones (as Hamilton) do fine work, in fact threatening to upstage Smith pretty comprehensively when they are on screen. The movie is beautiful to look at, too — a convincing and compelling recreation of its period.

Christopher and His Kind may not quite be the “real story”, but it’s an absorbing and touching addition to the layers of narrative, fact and fiction that are Isherwood’s Berlin.

As with last year, the Out In Africa (OIA) gay and lesbian film festival is spread over the year in three instalments. The first part runs from March 23 to April 1 in Cape Town (Nu Metro V&A Waterfront) and Johannesburg (Hyde Park), opening with Albert Nobbs, for which Glenn Close received her sixth Oscar nomination. (Subsequent editions of OIA 2012 take place at midyear and in October.) Guests of the fest are director Bavo Defurne (North Sea Texas) and actor-producers Dreya Weber (A Marine Story) and Josefine Tengblad (Kiss Me). For more information go to oia.co.za.