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criticalpraisefilm · 1 month

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I Saw the TV Glow - and I wept. Here's why.

Coming out is scary. There's a million reasons why but the one I want to talk about is the self doubt.

What if I'm wrong? What if it's not true? What if I go through the frightening, worrying steps I have to take to live my most authentic life and it just gets worse?

I Saw the TV Glow asks another question: what if you're right? And what if that fear didn't go away? And what if it was worth it anyway?

(for the sake of this review, I will be referring to the main characters as Owen and Maddy, and using he/him and she/her pronouns respectively, as that is how they are presented in the movie, no matter the subtext. Or just straight text)

Owen (Justice Smith) is a lonely, shy, awkward boy living in the suburbs to an ill mother and an unwelcoming father. He connects with Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a lonely, show, awkward girl living with an uncaring mother and an abusive father, over The Pink Opaque, a TV show about two psychic girls, Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan) fighting evil. As they grow up and their lives drift apart and together again, the lines between reality and The Pink Opaque start to blur, and Owen and Maddy realise they may have more in common with Isabel and Tara than they realised.

I first watched this movie in a group on a TV connected to a laptop with a bunch of other trans people. The small screen felt appropriate, with the early 2000s VHS aesthetic and imagery, somehow watching something modern and slightly more retro at the same time, like we really were streaming The Pink Opaque, but the real one, not the terrible version Owen discovers later. Describing things from my own childhood as retro feels a bit strange, but life moves on, whether you really live it or not. Maybe we should have watched it on a CRT TV for the full effect.

Regardless, after it was done, there was discussion, but mostly there was silence as we processed what we'd watched and dried our tears. I think I cried more than anyone else. That's not a comment about how it connected with me more than anyone else. I just cry a lot at movies now. Thank you, estrogen.

The second time I watched it it was in a cinema. The movie got a very limited cinema run in my home country and there was only one day to go and see it. I didn't think I could emotionally handle watching it alone, so I invited a few friends. In the end, only one friend was able to come see it with me. That friend is not transgender.

After the movie I stood outside smoking a cigarette and bouncing up and down talking about all the details I had missed the first time, the aspect ratio changes, some of the callbacks that were more obvious second time around, but mostly I ranted about things I had already experienced the first time I saw the movie because it still sat with me.

Somewhat ironically, and maybe slightly perversely, I described how I felt by using a moment from a Marvel movie. I talked to my friend about Maddy and Owen speaking about years moving like seconds, your life going by without you even noticing, like scenes are being skipped. And then you're older, and then you're a year older, and another year, and you barely notice because it's like you're watching it play out on a screen. You can't feel anything because you feel hollow, like someone has dug out your insides and it's all just a dream you can't wake up from. Despite the hollowness and the numbness, you can't breathe.

And I told my friend it was like that moment in Thor: Ragnarok where the Hulk smashes Thor against the ground in a callback to when Hulk did that to Loki in The Avengers. Loki in the crowds stands up and points and shouts "that's how that feels!". Because yes. That's how that feels.

That's how it feels to watch your life go by because you somehow can't bring yourself to care. As if the life isn't yours. As if there's another life you should be living, but it's not there. Or, rather, it is there, but saying it out loud, admitting it to yourself sounds silly. Crazy, even. There's another life I should be living? My memories of being myself are all mixed up with my memories of being somebody else? That's ridiculous. I am myself. I have a life.

I'm not somebody else. I'm not a character I grew up connecting to and relating to. There is no other life waiting for me. I'm myself. I'm not someone else. I'm not a girl.

It doesn't matter that my life doesn't feel my own. It doesn't matter that I wish I was someone else. It doesn't matter that I wish I was beautiful and powerful and very far away. It doesn't matter that I found something, a piece of media that describes being different, and I clung to it like a lifeline. It doesn't matter that the person I connected to through that media did what I'm afraid to and was better for it. It doesn't matter that I can't breathe.

That's how it feels to live in the Midnight Realm. That's also how gender dysphoria feels. At least, that's how it felt to me.

"It was time I became a man."

Owen's line here is one of the two moments in the movie that makes me cry the hardest. I cried a lot, but I really cry there. The denial, the doubling down on the life you hate, that you can't connect with, but that you stick with because that other life you want or have been promised just seems to scary to strive for. Like Isabel in The Pink Opaque, he's afraid of what's inside him, and that fear keeps him away from his life and pushes him towards a life that doesn't suit him, that never suited him, but that he feels he has to live. A life as a real man.

I cried because the denial was heartbreaking and tragic. And very familiar. I was 16 when I learned what the word "transgender" meant, and that being that was something people could do. I didn't come out until I was 21, because it felt scary. I'd know. I'd be more certain. I'm not certain, and what if I'm wrong?

I'm 28 as I write this, and I've never been more certain. But I look back at myself, 10 years ago, and think what if nothing had changed. What if I hadn't taken those steps. What if I hadn't had the support I did and what if nobody had held my hand through that first step. What if nobody had given me the permission to come out and realise that I never needed permission?

Maddy tries to be that hand for Owen, but he's too scared. And that's familiar too. The first time I watched the movie I thought it was odd that Maddy tries to convince Owen to join her in The Pink Opaque, but she shows no joy in it. She doesn't describe how liberating it was to live her own life finally. She just describes the trauma it took to get there. But on my second watch I understood better. Because she had to return to the awful life that wasn't hers. Show how terrible this life is, how it isn't Owen's, how he can be that girl he briefly pretended to be when he wore Isabel's magic dress. The magic is that it's not pretend. This is who you could be.

The gentleness of the way Maddy interacts with Owen in every scene stands out to me. From drawing the tattoo on his neck, to never forcing him to come to terms with himself the way she did. It's not something she can force him into. He has to come to that conclusion himself. The scene where he tries on the dress and her reaction is very important to me. Seeing who he really is before even he does. The fact that the movie has gone out of its way to inform us that she is a lesbian is important, as it informs how she sees him. As a girl. Not as Isabel. Not as part of The Pink Opaque. Not as someone trapped in the Midnight Realm. A girl, first and foremost.

This is reinforced by the way Maddy reappears years after disappearing with shorter hair and wearing a shirt. Whether or not the character has made a change to her gender identity, we don't know, but she's found her truer self and wants to help Owen do the same.

The constant framing of Owen in pink hues, the way the aspect ratio changes between reality and the TV show and eventually starts presenting The Pink Opaque in the real aspect ratio, tell us who Owen is and who he is afraid to be.

If I'm harping on the same point. it's because that's what the movie is, a character piece about what if you didn't transition. What if you didn't take that step, and it takes great pains to show what it feels to be unfulfilled and watch your life go by without ever burying yourself, burying your old life, and rising into your new one as the person you should be.

Which brings me to the other line in the movie that makes me cry more than any other. A simple shot of a street with graffiti in the road, spelling out the ultimate message of Owen's character arc and the movie as a whole:

"There is still time."

There really is no time limit. There is time to learn how to breathe. To be yourself. I came out at 21, but I know plenty of people who came out later. The longer you have a life, the more difficult it is to let it go, and yet I don't know a single person who isn't happier having found a life as their more authentic self. It is always worth it.

That's what the ending is about, to me at least. I've heard people say it's bleak, that it ends suddenly without providing resolution on either the plot, or the allegory that the plot is about, but I disagree. Owen realises that Maddy was right. He gets the permission he's been waiting for for the last 20 years. His apologising for existing afterwards is more realistic than anything else - he's still himself. But he knows where his life should be. He knows to go and join his friend in The Pink Opaque. He knows how to breathe again.

Was Maddy right? Were they in the Midnight Realm the whole time? Was it all just a plot from Mr Melancholy? Were all the people in their lives just there to keep them there and keep them down? Was The Pink Opaque more than a TV show?

I don't care. That's not the part of the movie that moves me. That's just the vehicle through which the movie delivers what it's trying to say.

I describe the first steps of transitioning as a rabbit hole. It's dark, it's cramped, it's difficult to move and it seems like it goes on forever. Going down there in the first place is scary. Seems like a bad idea. What if it leads nowhere? What if it leads deeper? I have a sky that I can see here, and that's fine. My life has places it can go.

It's only after you come out the other side of the rabbit hole that you realise that what you've been seeing when you look up your whole life is the roof of a cave, and that the world is so much larger, and the air is so much crisper than you ever knew. You can move. You can breathe. You can see. The cave is comfortable when you don't know anything else, and the path out is terrifying. But the first time you see the sky, you know that you're never going back.

I cried the first time I saw the sky. And I cry when Owen sees the sky too.

#i saw the tv glow #jane schoenbrun #justice smith #brigette lundy paine #helena howard #lindsay jordan #i saw the tv glow spoilers #there is still time #the pink opaque #isttg

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