Daniel Cardone’s essential but relentlessly grim documentary about longtime AIDS survivors, Desert Migration, is fascinated with the ravaged but beautiful bodies of the gay men it profiles.
The film begins with lingering shots of each of the subjects as they begin their day. It follows them through their routine, some of them naked, as they prepare breakfast, shower, shave, meditate. Their faces peer directly at us — a few of them handsome, all of them weathered — in high definition close-up.
We are being asked to study them closely. Look at the skin, the camera is saying, the muscles, the sags, the piercings, the facial wasting, the extended stomachs, the disfigurement, the open wounds. Desert Migration does not want us to turn away from what the gay plague of 30 years ago has wrought in the here and now.
It’s an almost clinical look at the after-effects of a catastrophe, like the documentaries that examine Hiroshima survivors decades after the bomb.
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The film is a crucial addition to the AIDS artistic catalogue because gay community is only now beginning to process and devote resources, artistic and otherwise, to the long term effects of the early AIDS crisis and the walking wounded who survived. That said, director Cordone doesn’t make it easy for us.
There is an unyielding melancholy that permeates the film. The men profiled are almost uniformly isolated or at least wistful. The languid pace of the storytelling is underscored by Gil Talmi’s ethereal original music, a slow pulse of electronica, like a dry desert breeze.
The men all speak of searching for purpose in the desert after having resigned to die there. They come from various levels of money and privilege, including some who outlived their bank accounts, and they are not without the sociological trappings of gay men, meaning, a fixation on self image and the pursuit of sexual or romantic partners.
“In this town, being 60, I’m chicken,” says one. Several of them are battling the aging process mightily with trips to the gym and a regimen of steroids (“All the best looking guys have HIV,” one of the men advises), all while the Palm Springs gay clothing stores mock them with windows filled with slender mannequins, dressed in tiny and unforgiving speedos.
More than one of them debates whether or not they would have reached their current level of spirituality, of self love, if they had not come face to face with their own mortality so young. “I don’t know if my life would have such richness if I wasn’t positive,” one of them admits.
The real star of the film may be Austin Ahlborg’s sumptuous cinematography, which makes the most of the desert landscape, often contrasting the men’s flesh and blood with endless vistas of withered brush and rock.
Throughout the city of Palm Springs are hundreds of acres of modern, silently whirling windmills. The film focuses on them like a fetish, their propellers turning round and round, and the more Desert Migration returns to these monuments the more they appear to be clocks, ticking away, time always turning, slowing for no one. The image repeats itself, in shots of rotating ceiling fans and mechanical sculptures turning this way and that. Time is always moving, and it is unstoppable. Tick Tock.
There is so much in Desert Migration that will be familiar to gay men of a certain age, from the brutal to the romantic. Living life in five year increments, the sudden loss of friends, the confusion, the great love affairs cut short, the lives hijacked by drug addiction after having survived AIDS. There is comfort in identifying with these men, for those who need to, even if the film limits itself to their shared calamity.
After more than an hour of bleak pronouncements – and exactly one shot of someone laughing in the entire film – it becomes clear that filmmaker Cardone is almost exclusively fixated on the tragic aspects of these men’s stories.
It’s easy, maybe even lazy, to reduce AIDS survivors to their profound loss and a struggle for meaning in their later years (which, come to think of it, is a lifelong riddle everyone must contend with, after all).
Where is the joy? A brief dinner party suggests the good humor these men surely must incorporate into their lives, but otherwise filmmaker Cardone sticks to his theme of isolation and distress. “I just think that I’m very tired,” one of the men says, after unsuccessful attempts at connection and romance. “I just don’t know how much longer I even want to fight.”
“The optimistic ones survive,” one of the more privileged men offers, as night descends and he lowers the drapes of his condo, finely appointed with a leather sofa and a gleaming Judy Garland movie poster. Another subject begins the evening by welcoming a sex partner to warm up his sling. Optimism and escapism have their utilities.
Another man takes comfort in his own loneliness and solitude. “You’re a lot more free when you don’t believe much and you don’t have any hope,” he says, in an existential moment that might depress Sartre. “If you’re holding on to hope, then you’ve still got something in the way of enjoying what is.”
After all this, I wished to God that one of these guys was shown performing in musical theater or binge watching RuPaul’s Drag Race.
The film draws to a close in the darkness of the desert, as our day with these men ends. Throughout the mountain passes surrounding Palm Springs, out there in the dark, those windmills are surely still twirling.
They continue to spin, marking time, without regard for the riddles of life or the trials of gay men.
(Visit the Desert Migration site for information on film festival screenings in your area, or for news about the DVD release this summer.)
Armiya
“A few of them handsome…” Seriously? What the fuck was the point of including that? Shallow!
onthemark
Btw, the windmills are state-of-the-art power generators that create a great deal of the electricity for SoCal, which is a neat metaphor too.
Although I will definitely see this film, I wonder why these guys have so-o-o-o much trouble finding “connection” and non-sexual friendships (at least!) if there are so many of them in the same place. They have a lot of advantages that they don’t seem to be taking advantage of, or even notice. They’re from the same generation, they had similar experiences, they have stuff in common to talk about and do. There’s not even necessarily any reason why they can’t date each other either (gasp!). I’m poz and I’m not thrilled about getting old, yeah it kind of freaks me out, but I have no intention of ending up like this. Sorry, at some point you just need to quit whining and make friends. If you want!
martinbakman
The windmills are not inside Palm Springs. They tend to be north and west of town where the winds are most prevalent.
Migrating to the desert for health reasons is an age old human behavior. I look forward to watching this movie document how HIV patients followed this pattern and how they continue living their lives today.
Sounds like another example of telling our stories through film. Kudos to D. Cardone.
Tracy Pope
I have family and many friends in Palm Springs. Some of those friends are HIV+. None are anything like the description of this film. Two specifically refused to participate in it.
ProfessorMoriarty
^^^ Yeah, it sounds like this director had a very specific (and somewhat slanted) story to tell. Your friends must not have wanted to be a part of that “vision”.
Stache
@onthemark: I wonder why too Mark. I would love doing things with others to share. I love Palm Springs too. I’d even be open to hanging out with the guy and his giant judy garland poster. Lol
This film is more then about just hiv. Gay men need to know how to get older too. Just a black hole of no information there for us. I too would like to see this.
Brian
There was no gay plague. There was an illness which mostly hit a number of men who chose very poor lifestyles. Drug use, promiscuity, poor diets etc were all elements of their lifestyles. It was chosen, basically. You chose to destroy your immune systems.
That’s why I don’t consider them true victims. If you chose a lifestyle that made you prone to HIV, you’re not a true victim.
Stache
@Brian: Your logic is flawed and dangerous as usual. What about mothers giving it to their babies and Africans being the largest % of hiv cases worldwide. Are they partying it up too?
maxxbot
@Brian: Nice pseudoscience idiot, might as well tell people to take a shower after sex to prevent it.
onthemark
@Stache: Right – there’s a lot of talk lately about gay senior housing, because we’re living longer & we tend not to be close to our biological families, so it would be great to live with/near compatible gay people. These guys already HAVE that situation! Maybe it ain’t the Golden Girls but it should be something to enjoy, at least somewhat.
lildoggy
People, even those who are HIV+, have no clue what its been like to survive for years after the loss of so many. If you didn’t live through the 80’s with HIV don’t dare judge how people have coped through the damage. Its PTSD and learning how to survive the shallowness of those who take our struggle for granted. Like the commenter Brian who thinks we deserve to have gotten this menacing disease and watch our friends disappear. There weren’t organizations for support or life saving drugs. There wasn’t medical help. Many times it was difficult to find someone to bury our lovers, friends or brothers. You can’t imagine it unless you lived through it.
Poncho Sanchez
Brian is half right, the smattering of hiv positive men I know seroconverted after all the risks were documented, but at the same time, all gay men are vunerable, some were in what they thought were monogamous relationships.
Xtian99
@Brian: Oh Brian you poor dim sad thing… if Darwinism exists then you will be removed from the gene pool. I suggest that you test ur silly hypothesis.. eat healthy, get lots of sleep and exercise, take vitamins, don’t take drugs or drink, then have unprotected sex with as many positive men as you can and see if your self-righteous “clean living” keeps you HIV negative, b/c if, as you state, it is only “men who chose very poor lifestyles” who “chose a lifestyle that made [them] prone to HIV”, you will be immune!
HIV hit everyone from every walk of gay life – if you had a blood stream you were fair game… I am sure you have a blood stream… it’s your brain stem that I think is lacking.
guyingpp
@xtian99… this makes no sense:
“then have unprotected sex with as many positive men as you can and see if your self-righteous “clean living” keeps you HIV negative, b/c if, as you state, it is only “men who chose very poor lifestyles” who “chose a lifestyle that made [them] prone to HIV”, you will be immune!”
I would imagine he’d point out having unprotected, indiscriminate sex was/is a “poor lifestyle choice” that no amount of clean living makes up for.
Hermes
Safer sex, monogamy, celibacy – those are the three things that were and are protective – gay OR straight. The disease is a virus (retro or not, its a virus). I too know the arguments of men like Peter H. Duesberg. He was a brilliant virologist, and he was wrong on HIV – something that occurs with all scientists. I expect it. Everyone should, no matter their field. It’s immaterial. Are drugs and drink good? No, I loathe them beyond anything that any moralizer here thinks they do. Life is a wonderful thing, every single moment is to be treasured, drugs and drink – for whatever fleeting experiences they offer, are worthless, less than dross – but they do not cause AIDS, a virus does, HIV. That simply isn’t open to argument anymore – no serious scientist except a tiny handful that have tied themselves to Duesberg and to pseudo-science feel differently – and to put that in perspective, that tiny handful is relatively MUCH smaller than the handful of psychologists who cling to the idea of reparative therapy – and THOSE are considered quacks, unfortunately, a great researcher – Peter Duesberg – also is one.
Chris
Many poz gay men thought their lives were over in the 1980s/early-90s; and so, they relocated to SE FL. They sold their life insurance policies and lived on the proceeds. In the process, they (re)created the gayborhoods in Wilton Manors, Miami’s upper east side, SO Beach and even Key West. Though there was a lot of death, somehow, gay folk managed to recreate the areas where they chose to spend what they thought would be their last days. ….. Not the desert; but still an important part of this story.
notevenwrong
That “optimistic ones survive” is a really wrongheaded and harmful meme. First, it is not true, and it blames victims of illnesses for dying because they were just mentally “weak.” I see the same victim-blaming a lot with cancer too, as if dying is their fault for just not thinking themselves healthy, which is BS.
Brian Jacobson
Older gay men spread hiv in chat rooms on purpose. I was guven hiv cause i trusted he was telling the truth. Then he told me i sinned and he used me. Fresh out of college. He said 49. More like 63. He couldnt handle me being bi and working 60 hours a week and being content with my YOUNG life.
He infected me on purpose holding his breath to cum. Still soft no warning.
I hate men cause what he did. He blamed me. My sin of iral sodomy for dying young. Then deleted his profile. I cant take it. The age difference and me giving pleasure and him pain.to me.
I hate gay men now. Most hookup criwd would do it all over again to me.
Brian Jacobson
The surviving old pricks are spreading it thru oral sex. No sympathy. Its behavior. No denying it. Not god. Not satan. Gay men choosing to spread it. On purpose.