[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]
There is a scene relatively early in Queer’s sprawling narrative that absolutely shattered me. Over the course of a single, continuous, uncomfortably long take, protagonist William Lee (Daniel Craig, inheriting a role previously played on the screen by Peter Weller in David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch) meticulously prepares a dose of heroin, shoots up, lights a cigarette, and proceeds to completely dissociate from reality, staring into the emptiness of his cramped apartment as the drug floods his veins and permeates his senses. In a story packed with surreal visual effects, this moment feels unnervingly, hauntingly grounded. The audience has already seen what the character’s addiction looks like through his own distorted perception; here, however, we’re confronted with the objective, unglamorous truth of his gradual self-destruction.
It is, in short, the most essential sequence of images in a film in which every frame is an immaculately crafted painting, capturing the overarching conflict and core themes in one uninterrupted camera setup. Lee is defined entirely by unfulfilled longing—for intimacy, for companionship, for any semblance of affection whatsoever. This unquenchable desire often manifests in the form of literal ghostly hands that desperately reach out towards his fellow man (a rather simple illusion achieved via multiple exposure/superimposition), intangibly caressing the would-be lovers that he lacks the courage to physically embrace—externalizing in heartbreakingly concrete terms the repressed vulnerabilities and anxieties that he cannot articulate. Indeed, his frequent experimentation with hallucinogens is motivated by a somewhat whimsical belief that “expanding his consciousness” will allow him to transcend the limits of his flesh, thus enabling him to telepathically communicate with others (particularly Drew Starkey’s aloof, enigmatic Eugene Allerton) on a more primal, spiritual level—a pursuit of enlightenment that will inevitably result in failure unless he first learns how to love and accept himself.
Tragic and tender in equal measure, Queer is stealthily one of the best movies of 2024. Its quality can’t be judged by conventional standards of “entertainment value”; its aching beauty is far subtler than that (bordering on subliminal), lingering in the viewer’s memory long after the end credits have rolled.
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