Buy Keep the Lights On on DVD

Keep the Lights On

Music Box Films / Year: 2012

DVD More Info Close Caption: Yes Region Code: 1 UPC: 741360538139 ISBN: B009PJ1Q82 Catalog #: DV34267902 Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (Primary), English subtitles	In stock and ready to ship	$24.99 (16% off) List Price: $29.99
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Synopsis

Keep the Lights On chronicles an emotionally and sexually charged journey of two men in New York City through love, friendship and addiction. Documentary filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhardt) and closeted lawyer Paul (Zachary Booth) meet through a casual encounter, but soon find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers - compulsive and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity while being true to himself. Director Ira Sachs’s fearlessly personal screenplay is anchored by Lindhardt, who embodies Erik’s isolation and vulnerability with a gentle presence. Harrowing and romantic, visceral and layered, Keep the Lights On is a film that looks at love and all of its manifestations, taking it to dark depths and bringing it back to a place of grace.

3 Reasons To buy this film

Keep the Lights On won the awards for "Outstanding Screenwriting in a US Dramatic Feature Film" and "Outstanding US Dramatic Feature Film" at Outfest and the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The film has been receiving rave reviews from critics. The Village Voice called it "front-runner for best American film of the year" and NEXT magazine said that it is "the grittiest and most heartbreaking gay love story of our times."
Director Ira Sachs (who gay audiences might know best as the man behind the 1996 hit The Delta) has crafted such a compelling film that it transcends the limits of gay cinema and has connected with larger, mixed audiences around the world.

Review

Ira Sachs (The Delta) is not afraid to delve deeply into the effervescent and sometimes carnal nature that makes us tick as humans. Set in New York City in the late '90s, Keep the Lights On follows blond and handsome documentary filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhardt) during his sexual awakening as he finds johns through one-night stands or phone sex chat lines. That is where he meets sweet and sexy literary agent Paul (Zachary Booth) and sparks an hedonistic relationship that goes beyond their occasional hot sex. The couple embarks on an explosive and equally destructive nine-year journey of drug addiction, emotional turmoil and heartfelt sacrifices. What makes this absorbing drama such an essential piece of queer cinema is how brutally honest, raw and unnerving Erik and Paul’s relationship unfolds on screen. Both Lindhardt’s and Booth’s remarkable performances and the film’s razor sharp dialogue perfectly capture the volatile time period when the AIDS crisis loomed heavily over the gay community. The real beauty behind this powerful work is that the storyline is based on Sachs’s life experiences and thus boldly epitomizing "life imitating art."

-- Kelly Burkhardt

Awards

Best Feature Film (Won) — Berlin International Film Festival
Best Dramatic Feature (Nominated) — Sundance Film Festival
Best Feature (Nominated) — Independent Spirit Awards
Best Director: Ira Sachs (Nominated) — Independent Spirit Awards
Best Screenplay: Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias (Nominated) — Independent Spirit Awards
Best Male Lead: Thure Lindhart (Nominated) — Independent Spirit Awards

Media Quotes

"Lindhardt, sweet and childish and achingly vulnerable, gives a stunning performance." — Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly
"This is a drama about finding one's self-worth; you simply have to see it." — Joshua Rothkopf Time Out New York
"Keep The Lights On feels less like a memoir than a collage made from diary scraps, evocative but not prescriptive." — Sam Adams The A.V. Club
"A haunting, immersive portrait of a romance between two men, one that's marked - and marred - by both drug dependency and emotional codependency. Not unlike last year's gay-themed drama, Weekend it proves an important and mature piece of business." — Gary Goldstein Los Angeles Times
"Its subject is not addiction or ambition, or even love in a conventional romantic sense, but rather the more elusive and intriguing matter of intimacy: how it grows, falters and endures over time." — A.O. Scott The New York Times
"With its naked but never self-indulgent depictions of sex and all manner of addiction, Keep the Lights On is disarmingly, at times exhilaratingly, human." — Eric Hynes The Village Voice
"Not only does this film gloriously fulfill the potential that Ira Sachs has tantalized movie-lovers with for years, it also help explains what took him so long. Out of lost love comes a terrific work of art; it's the oldest story in the world, but it always feels new when it's done right." — Andrew O'Hehir Salon.com
"The film... is as sure-footed as their partnership is not - a nuanced portrait of emotional turmoil, persuasively acted, richly sensual one moment, wrenching the next, and unlike so many films centering on gay characters, not particularly concerned with things like coming out or HIV." — Bob Mondello NPR
"A well-written, sensitively directed relationship drama. In most circumstances, that's all it would be - and that would be enough. But lead Thure Lindhardt pushes the picture into realms of such exposed intimacy, you almost feel like you're dating him yourself." — Elizabeth Weitzman New York Daily News
"The film is at its best in the bedroom, not shying away from the sexual relationship, but not being graphic about it, either. There is great sex, clumsy sex, tender sex - and it's all crucial to the story. Such genuine intimacy, whether gay or straight, is virtually nonexistent in American cinema. It's enthralling to see it here." — David Lewis San Francisco Chronicle
"It seems odd to call a detailed portrait of toxic romance lovely, but Keep the Lights On truly is." — Ray Greene Boxoffice Magazine
"Sachs skillfully explores dangerous extremes -- not only drug addiction, but the slipperiness of attraction." — Eric Kohn Indiewire

Product Format Information

DVD : $24.99

Availability: In stock and ready to ship
Close Caption: Yes
Region Code: 1
UPC: 741360538139
Catalog #: DV34267902

Studio : Music Box Films

Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (Primary) , English Subtitles
Aspect Ratio: Widescreen
Extras: Deleted Scenes
Features:
Original theatrical trailer
Behind-the-scenes footage
Audio commentary: with director Ira Sachs

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Blu-ray : $34.99

Availability: In stock and ready to ship
Close Caption: Yes
Region Code: 1
UPC: 741360538153
Catalog #: DB34267903

Studio : Music Box Films

Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (Primary) , English Subtitles
Aspect Ratio: Widescreen
Extras: Deleted Scenes
Features:
Audio commentary: with director Ira Sachs
Bonus film: In Search of Avery Willard - a 16-minute companion documentary by Ira Sachs (featured in the film)
Behind-the-scenes footage
Audition Tapes
Original theatrical trailer

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Streaming : $3.99

Customer Reviews

Gay Love in 21st-Century New York

Amos Lassen wrote on 10/03/2012:

Set in 1997, New York is changing. Erik Rothman (Thure Lindhardt), a documentary filmmaker, meets Paul Lucy (Zachary Booth), a good looking lawyer who is in the closet. What started as a sexual encounter evolves into a relationship and the two men begin a life together yet each of them privately deals with his own addictions and compulsions. Ira Sachs gives us an in-depth look at the nature of a relationship in today’s world. This is, above everything else, a love story that deals with what love means and how far will a person go to keep things together.

Erik and Paul met via a phone sex line and their casual relationship evolves into something so much more. The chemistry between the two men is boiling hot. They are together for some ten years during which they dealt with demanding work schedules, drug addiction and remaining monogamous. The fact that the movie is set in the ‘90’s one thing but it looks like a film from that time.

Over the ten years that the two are together, the relationship is troubled and ultimately falls apart. We are like voyeurs watching this happen as we see little events in the men’s lives. We can only imagine how difficult it is to film a relationship coming apart and the relationship never comes across as fully realized. Erik is sympathetic with a vulnerability that causes us to like him whereas Paul is a character that does not have much going for him. Erik tries very hard to try to save Paul from his addiction to crack cocaine and in reality Erik is the focus of the film.

The film is also quite bold and when we first meet Erik he is on the phone talking to someone as he sticks his hand into his pants and fondles himself. He says that he is masculine, 5’11’’, blonde, handsome and has 6 ½ inches uncut. I read that Erik is actually a representation of director Sachs and this is the story of his own tormented relationship. However I read that Paul is well known in the New York City publishing world (and of course we can guess who it is).

Sachs presents us with a look at gay life in NYC at the end of the 20th century and onto the beginning of the 21st. Erik and Paul deal with the usual problems of gay urban life and as I said before, drug addiction, promiscuity and what comes across as the onset of mental illness. While there is no frontal nudity in the film there is lots of explicit gay sex.

The actors live their roles and they are complex characters and all of us can something to identify with in the two men and their relationship. This is not a movie about identity, homophobia or coming-out—the usual themes we get in gay film. This is a movie about a relationship, about two men who fall in love in a city that is gay friendly and diverse and who have gay friends that act as a support group, yet the two guys still manage to mess it up.

I remember so well Sach’s first film, “The Delta” which dealt with sexual awakening which is contrast to this in which our characters are sexually awake. Here they deal with indecision and this film goes deep into the psyches of Erik and Paul (to a lesser degree) and plays on the viewer’s emotions. I do not think that we get to see many personal movies like this and it is a welcome surprise. In fact, I have several reviews that state that this is one of the best dramatic films screened at Sundance, 2012.

Spanning ten years filled with personal crises, the film becomes almost epic in scope and gives us the character’s sense of who they are as they deal with intimacy. A word about the title–it seems that keeping the lights on means that everything is revealed and there are no secrets. Quite powerful, this is a film that you do not want to miss. I was lucky enough to see the movie again this week and hear director Ira Sachs make comments and answer questions.This is one of those movies that leaves you with something new after each viewing.