THE EVENT (2003) This recent documentary We Were Here (which I reviewed here) is one of the must-see films of the year. I’ve probably spent more time thinking about this account of San Francisco’s gay community during the first ten years of the AIDS epidemic than I have any other movie I’ve seen in 2011. One of the sections of the film that’s stayed with me is a tale told by a survivor. He tells the story of his friend’s death. It was a suicide but the story he relates doesn’t conjure up the same emotions that word does. Terminally ill and not far from the end, this man decided to die on his own terms. He threw a party. All his friends came, everyone had a good time and, at the end of the night, he died. This touching segment immediately reminded me of Thom Fitzgerald’s 2003 film, The Event, which tells a similar, fictionalized story. Taking as its tone the precise mix of dark comedy and heavy melodrama befitting of a person who would throw a party for his own suicide, the film will never be accused of subtlety or great insight. It is an emotional and an unapologetically sentimental movie and, with a fantastic cast (Olympia Dukakis, Jane Leeves, Parker Posey, Sarah Polley), it’s magnificently played.
THE EVENT (2003)
