A Home at the End of the World – DVD
A Home at the End of the WorldFor the most part, I really liked this movie. Bobby is a terrific character: innocent, charming, open, needy and sexual. I also like the way all the relationships in this film are portrayed, because they’re not at all black and white. All of the relationsihps between the main characters (Bobby and Jonathan, Bobby and Clare, Jonathan and Claire, even Bobby and Jonathan’s mother) are an ambiguous combination of friendship, romance, sexual attraction and family. It was nice to see these kinds of “gray” relationships, which I’ve experienced often in my own life, on film.
My favorite part of the film was the first “act”, which showed Bobby as a child, absorbing much of his identity from his older brother, and Bobby as a teenager, befriending Jonathan and slowly being adopted by his whole family. Somehow, I preferred the younger, teenage versions of the characters to the adult versions. It’s not that the older actors didn’t do a good job (in fact, seeing this film gave me a newfound respect for Collin Ferrell as an actor), it’s just that I found the older version of Jonathan much less appealing. I was a little disappointed that Jonathan’s character ended up being a sad cliche in so many ways … a promiscuous gay man who winds up sick from AIDS. Since so many of the relationships and ideas in this film seemed so fresh, it was sad to see one of the main characters follow such a tired path.
Although I haven’t read the book, I could sense from the film that there were important aspects of the plot and the characters’ lives that had been cut out. Adding scenes may have made the film longer, but it probably would have improved it. Overall, however, this was an entertaining, endearing and almost great film.
