Jonathan

By: Amos Lassen

"Jonathan"
Family, Love and Regret
Amos Lassen
Director Piotr Lewandowski's "Jonathan" is a beautiful film and a visual experience about family, romantic love, and bittersweet regret. At 23 years old, Jonathan (Jannis Niewöhner) and his aunt struggle to keep their family farm working while at the same time taking care of Jonathan's emotionally distant father, Burghardt (André Hennicke), who is dying of cancer. As Burghardt's condition worsens, the family hires Anka (Julia Koschitz), a nurse from a nearby town.

While Jonathan and Anka begin to fall in love, a long-absent former friend of Burghardt's arrives and reveals a secret that will change the course of Burghardt's final weeks and Jonathan's understanding of his family. This is a story about a later in life coming out and how the bond between father and son can be repaired and strengthened. the repairing of a sundered father-son bond-is at times raw and emotional. The cinematography is gorgeous as are the scenes of intimate lovemaking that are juxtaposed with heartrending scenes in which damaged people confront each other and their own fears and regrets. Burghardt is a man facing his past mistakes and his own sorrow, while making brave choices about how he will live his final days.

"Jonathan" reverses the generational conflict that drives more traditional gay-themed plotlines. Jonathan is an emotionally volatile young man. He is 24-years-old only child and is desperate to unlock the family closet full of secrets and lies before they are buried forever. However, he becomes distracted by sizzling sexual chemistry with Anka, his father's Jonathan only understands that his father is gay relatively late and after the viewers understand that this is the case.

About halfway through the movie, the focus shifts from Jonathan's rite of passage to his father's last-rites story. Director Lewandowski tries to hint that Jonathan himself may be gay by exploiting Jonathan's body to provide maximum homoeroticism. He never misses a chance to have him pull off his tight T-shirt, go skinny-dipping in or have sex on the back of a pick-up truck.

We see Jonathan's angry tantrum when he finally discovers his father's sexuality and here is the only fault I find with the film-this scene feels a bit too engineered and more dramatically convenient than emotionally true.

Ultimately, this is a film about the father-son relationship, but here it is the father that's gay. We get hints throughout the film and as I said earlier, we know this before Jonathan does.Jonathan's story is a sensitive and atypical coming-out story that will stay with you long after the film is over.