The Crying Game

The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992) "Who knows the secrets of the human heart?" 

It is my contention that this little "character" study, embedded within a terrorist thriller,  is one of "the" great love stories, as it deals, rather scrupulously, with "love" and doesn't stray into the sexual category.

Well, it does stray, but not too far from home.

Sure, the story surrounding the film is about "the secret," but that's just a device for setting up a story about the nature of love, and what this "crazy little thing" called love is, and why it holds such sway against our better judgments, even against—or even with—our natures, better or otherwise. And it does so in one of the better "traps" a film-maker has devised for its protagonist, worthy of a Hitchcock or a Kubrick. 

When first we meet Fergus (Stephen Rea), he's a flunky of a foot-soldier in a radical IRA organization. He's not well-respected in the group, so he gets the low-tier job of guarding over the British soldier kidnapped for political concessions. Fergus doesn't have the spine, the bite, the drive, the Cause-fueled socio-pathic energy of Maguire (Adrian Dunbar) or Jude (Miranda Richardson, as ferocious a femme-fatale as has been created for the screen). And he's just not asshole enough to be a terrorist. Better the job of care and feeding, rather than the tough meat of strategizing and negotiating...or terrorizing.

Three days of holding Jody (Forest Whitaker) hostage in Thatcher's non-negotiating Britain makes Fergus and the soldier form a Stockholm-ish bond. So, when demands are not met, when it comes time for Fergus to dispose of the evidence—kill the hostage Jody—he can't do it. He's spent too much time with him, become too sympathetic. Too empathetic. Fate, however, isn't so discriminating. And Fergus is left with the pact he's made with the fallen soldier.

That vow is to break the news of his death to Jody's true-love, Dil (Jaye Davidson), and, when the rest of the group disbands to go underground, Fergus, instead, travels to fulfill his pledge and, along the way, becomes smitten with the hair-dresser/chanteuse with Dil.

The rest of the movie details Fergus's struggle to stay underground and protect Dil from his vengeful mates. It gets complicated. Very complicated.

As the bartender played by Jim Broadbent says in the clip below "Takes all types. Who knows the secrets of the human heart?"

What's love got to do with it? Everything. Like Vertigo, The Crying Game brings into the open the question of what "love" really is. Fergus, and Vertigo's protagonist both share a name fragment as well as a vision of love that is their own, one that may have nothing to do with reality. But, it's real in some way. It has to do with responsibility and commitment and loyalty and all the things that go along with love and the bonds it ties you up in.

At two points in the screenplay, writer-director Neil Jordan uses the fable of the frog and the scorpion and the bond they form to cross a river. Orson Welles used it in his film Confidential Report (aka Mr. Arkadin) to explain the unexplainable. For Fergus, it's acknowledgement that he's learned something...if only about himself. "It's my Nature" is the last line of the fable.

Well, that's half-right. But, there are no absolutes. As with the old debate, one has to acknowledge that "Nurture" plays a hand as well.

It's been years since I've seen The Crying Game—I saw it in theaters very early on in its first-run before it "caught on" and became a subject of water-cooler whisperings and specific plot-points that—really—have nothing to do with the crux of the matter. And what the film says about "the secrets of the human heart."

Today is Valentine's Day. I hope it is happy for you whether you are with someone or alone. 

There will be more love stories of the movies next week.

"She's... She's On!" Dil (Jaye Davidson) performs—
a sequence seamlessly designed and directed by Neil Jordan,
realized only after you've seen it a second time.