[dropcap]I[/dropcap]ra Sachs is a New York-based filmmaker whose past films include Forty Shades of Blue (2005), Married Life (2007), and recent festival hit Keep the Lights On (2012). His latest release, Love Is Strange, is the touching story of husbands Ben and George who, after losing their primary source of income due to workplace discrimination, must rely on the hospitality — and couch cushions — of their friends and family while they undertake that most Herculean of tasks: flat hunting in New York City. Sachs spoke with tn2 about the messages of the film, the processes behind it, and a potential move to Broadway (please, culture gods, let this be a thing).

Love Is Strange is a subtly poignant drama, with tensions building between characters in close quarters and familiar, everyday struggles made manifest on screen. The drama is made all the more effective by a knowing sense of humour that often emerges to either cut or underline these tensions. The screenplay was deftly co-written by Sachs and his long-time writing partner, Mauricio Zacharias. Regarding their process, Sachs explains: “As co-writers, we share an interest in a certain kind of movie, and we’re very similar in how we look at life, and how we talk very often about our families and people we know. We share the stories of our lives and we make movies out of them. Not that the film is autobiographical, but every character is based on someone or some event that we witnessed in our own lives, and I think we bring that curiosity about how people behave to our writing.”

This is, certainly, a film set on observing people in different configurations, and how they interact when thrown out of their own (or injected into each other’s) routines and living situations. Accommodation, both in the practical housing sense and in the social sense of adapting and adjusting, becomes a major theme throughout the story. Sachs describes his perspective and inspiration coming into this film: “For me, I’m 49 years old, I’m a middle-aged person, and the film is very much about the perspective I have. I feel very much connected to the Marisa Tomei character, because I’m hopefully somewhere in the middle; I can watch my parents and also observe my children, knowing that the future is not forever, but remembering the innocence of being younger. I think that’s really what the film is trying to talk about. [We] developed the characters of Ben and George, in a lot of ways, looking at our parents, who are coming to a certain point in their lives where the future is not as wide open as it used to be, and trying to be gentle and understanding at what that might entail.” Through this multigenerational structure, Sachs believes, the audience is given multiple points of access and relatability to the film’s emotional centre, and that “people connect to this film out of recognition of their own relationships in it”.

Besides discussing the script and the themes, it should also be said that Love Is Strange is a film that manages to take these mundane routines and minor annoyances, and shoot them in a way that makes them look beautiful. Why take this visual approach to the material? Sachs explains, “I worked with a cinematographer who is from Greece [Christos Voudouris], and one of the things we talked about was trying to make a film that was romantic about the city of New York whilst also being very intimate. It has that cross between being, as you said, beautiful, but also very familiar. I lived in New York for 25 years, so I thought it was something I had to offer. We talked a lot about Woody Allen’s films, particularly Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan, which were kind of romantic odes to the city of New York but also presented a kind of intimate portrait of life here.”

One of the most intimate details to be found in Love Is Strange is the constant question of finances. Characters in this film discuss their savings, housing prices, and money woes openly and frankly, in a way that is rare to see on film but feels honest to these economic realities; these real-life sources of drama for most viewers. Sachs discusses his reasoning behind this theme, and how it is tied to questions of identity: “To me, at the centres of most novels are questions of love and money. They are the two places where drama can always be found in all of our lives. They’re both very significant: how we love and how we exist, financially. So for me, a character cannot be presented that you don’t recognise on some level. What are the economic parameters of that character’s life, and how does that influence his or her decisions?”

Asked about what other themes were crucial to the story Sachs wished to tell, he reflects: “One thing that we thought about a lot was the question of education, in a broad sense. Asking what we teach each other and our children, both within the structure of schooling as well as within the structure of a family. There’s a letter in the middle of the film that the character George reads, that he addresses to the parents of the children at the school from which he had been fired, and it’s really asking ‘What do we teach our children?’ and ‘What is important to us?’ and ‘What about courage to be honest and true to yourselves?’. And I think about having Ben in the house with this young boy […] Ben maintains a passion for life, for art, and for education; what does this transmit to Joey, to the generation younger than him? These are questions that I think are really thematic to the film.”

One of the most talked-about elements of the film, particularly in the pre-release buzz in Ireland, has been its depiction of the harmful role the clergy can play in institutions such as the Catholic school system, where old regulations and ideas of morality have not necessarily evolved at an adequate speed to reduce their negative impact on LGBT families and members of the church. The central plot point of the movie, in fact, revolves around how “religiously justified” employment policies dismantle the life that Ben and George spent 39 years building together. Still, despite exposing these hypocrisies and harshness, the film treats Christianity with a fair touch; George’s faith and commitment to the religion does not waver, despite its crueler effects. Sachs talks about finding this balance in the depiction of the church, observing: “I try to be democratic in my empathy, and try to understand that everyone is struggling with their own relationship with themselves and also to a system […] I think the Catholic church is a fascinating, complex, contradictory, troubling institution which, as a storyteller, I try my best to understand.”

Despite being an NY-centric romance, Love Is Strange is a film that comes across with a particular urgency for audiences in Ireland. With the marriage referendum only a few months away, supporters of LGBT rights are pinning their hopes on marriage equality as a sign of advanced acceptance. While equality is certainly a human right deserved by all couples, this film suggests that there are still forces which, as long as they remain in place, will have the power to upset these hard-won protections. Sachs describes himself as a “humanist filmmaker”, and the deeply human themes of his film could not have come at a better time.

Photos by Jeong Park.