GUN HILL ROAD screams get on the bus and tackle our social challenges today. The film, which premiered at Sundance on Monday, is a socially relevant, thought provoking film tackling the costs to society when a fatherless home forces the mother to go at it alone. The father (played by Esai Morales known for his role in La Bamba) struggles with his Bronx street crime ways.
In the fine art world, sex plays out in countless interactions. Identity and discovery are core to the social acceptance of an artist’s next work. When painted or presented in a still – like Picasso transforming in his late teens from realism to “Taurus” deconstructions of cubism – we find value in the visual message. It’s a solitary process either experienced from a book, a museum or a wall in your own home. The influences – or lack there of available to the teen (Michael/Vanessa) in Gun Hill Road dramatically demonstrate the confusion.
Films move us in theaters because we typically are not alone. Gun Hill Road, like The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or The Crying Game gives us outstanding performances that force us to ask – is our social fabric strong enough to accept a-typical personal challenges?
This decade, similar to the Reagan years or those of Eisenhower, America has an economic challenge and political flux that must deal with teenage abandonment, estrangement and the classic challenges found in our high schools. While Warhol was deliberate in his voice on consumerism and Basquiat with his graffiti, Gun Hill Road drives you to ask – how far will you go to accept your fellow man.
Relevant Art to This Film:
- Noahs Ark by Loet Vanderveen
- House Outside of Trinidad by Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen