The Crying Game

Rating

Director

Neil Jordan

Screenplay

Neil Jordan

Length

1h 52m

Starring

Stephen Rea, Miranda Richardson, Jaye Davidson, Forest Whitaker, Adrian Dunbar, Joe Savino, Jim Broadbent, Andree Bernard

MPAA Rating

R

Review

Finding oneself in the midst of chaos forms the perfect metaphor in The Crying Game, a film that explores race, identity, sexuality, and perception during a tumultuous time in Ireland.

Stephen Rea plays Fergus, a provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army) volunteer tasked with watching over an abducted British soldier (Forest Whitaker). As a hostage-for-trade, the soldier implores Fergus to seek out and protect his girlfriend Dil (Jaye Davidson) should anything happen to him. Fergus agrees, not realizing he will have to carry out the task. After the operation goes belly-up and Fergus is forced to flee into hiding in London as a day laborer named Jimmy, he tracks Dil down only to discover that the target of his protection isn’t anything like she’s expected to be.

Miranda Richardson and Adrian Dunbar co-star as Fergus’ fellow IRA members who go in search of him with a new mission in mind, the assassination of a judge hostile to the IRA’s demands. Fergus’ attempts to keep Dil safe create trouble keeping him from stopping his associates from killing the judge.

The Crying Game was a long gestating idea for writer/director Neil Jordan who had initially conceived of the project in the mid-80s, but was unable to realize his project until 1992 after he struggled to secure the kind of funding necessary to complete the film. Ultimately, all of the mitigating factors were overcome and the film played the festival circuit in September.

Jordan’s screenplay is controversial not just in its depiction of a sympathetic figure in the form of an IRA fighter, but also in its forward-thinking sexual politics. Marketing suggested a big secret in the film and it’s something that caught a lot of audiences off guard. Few films in this era presented these kinds of characters with empathy and compassion and the humanely compelling tale is a better one because of it.

Rea is terrific in the film as is Davidson in what would be the first of only two big screen performances for the actor. Richardson is also wonderful in the film and it’s no surprise that all three actors were nominated for Academy Awards that year, though Richardson was cited for the psychological thriller Damage instead, a culmination nomination based not just on the nominated performance and her work in this film, but also in the period drama Enchanted April.

The Crying Game is a one-of-a-kind experience that was all the better for not knowing what the surprise in the film was about. Even without that shock twist halfway through the film, the resultant picture is a strongly directed, brilliantly acted, and richly textured thriller that successfully identified its most popularly-problematic elements and leaned into them rather than letting outside pressures dictate its direction. The film is a pinnacle of the 1990s indie cinema resurgence and remains a thoroughly engaging film.

Spoiler Discussion

I tried my best to avoid spoilers in the above, but it’s very difficult when citing Davidson’s work. In The Crying Game, it was easy to believe the actor was female until the moment of reveal, but knowing the actor’s gender in advance only mutes that specific moment, a full-frontal nude scene that eclipses many other such scenes in films before and after. The film was released at a time when the AIDS pandemic was still struggling for relevance and films were just starting to address it in an appropriate manner. While this film didn’t deal with the subject at all, it did have a plotline that could be weaponized by bigots had it not been so successfully achieved.

Rea’s character struggles with his acceptance of Dil as a man dressed as a woman. It’s only after internal reflection that he comes to realize that it’s not the package with whom he falls in love, but the human being inside it. For a film like this to become the sensation that it was is surprising given the politics of the era. However, its humanistic approach to the subject matter makes the whole film resonate long after its release. Perhaps there are some problematic issues still with its depiction of a transgender character, but 30 years removed from the modern movement is enough to suggest that its transgressions are insignificant in the grand scheme of its reception.

Review Written

June 15, 2022