Initial viewing March 2022

Best Keanu: “Fuck! Why can’t I ever say what I actually mean?”

Subsequent viewing July 2022

Best Keanu: “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you. It’s important. It could really affect things between you and me.”

In the documentary Side by Side, Keanu asks the Wachowskis if we lose something of the communal movie-going experience with the rise of digital and streaming. He eventually calls it “laughing together and crying together,” after one of the Wachowskis teases him for likening it to the exchange of “pheromones.”

My answer to Keanu’s question is yes; it was already yes, but I got new evidence of why the answer is yes two days ago, when I went to an independent theatre’s midnight screening of Point Break.

There’s plenty of opportunity for catcalling, line recitation, and just plain laughter in Point Break. But the moment that felt most like a communal movie experience was when Johnny Utah, just having come back from shooting his (gun) load into the sky after looking at Patrick Swayze’s blue eyes and choosing not to fire at him, seems to admit to Tyler he has something on his mind.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you. It’s important. It could really affect things between you and me.”

To which I, and the about 40 other people in audience, had a spontaneous, sincere, hard laugh. The reason it’s so funny was pretty obvious to me; Johnny Utah’s line sounds like the beginning of a coming out conversation — not a lead-in to him saying that he loves her or even that he Is. An. F.B.I. Agent., as the audiences of 1991 might have assumed.

The homoeroticism in Point Break is well-known. But it wasn’t until the screening two days ago that I saw how just very, very, homoerotic the movie is. By the time that scene came around, I was already thinking, “this is the gayest movie ever.”

Which, you must understand, is neither a criticism or a joke. I’m a queer person from an earlier generation. I’m a queer person from a generation where positive images of queer people were rare, and the idea that you could live a happy and fulfilled life in a relationship with someone of the same gender — let alone as a trans or nonbinary person, in any kind of relationship — was still a novelty.

Even those who claimed to live well, and have a gay life, were not actually believed. For a quick recap of the prevailing sentiment at the time, look no further than My Own Private Idaho — released the same year as Point Break — when Keanu’s character tells River Phoenix’s, “two guys can’t love each other.” Subtext: sure, they can have sex, and maybe even enjoy it. But they can’t love each other.

(On that note, I invite you to listen to this podcast from May 2022, wherein one host recounts that line and how it reminded him — I’m paraphrasing — of every straight guy who was just interested enough in the attention to play with it a bit, but would never actually consider it.)

So, I found this late viewing of Point Break not only joyful and laughter-inducing, but oddly touching. It’s the prequel to Johnny Utah’s coming out story, that time in his life when he started to see other men differently. It was when he first started to put a name to his feelings, even if the object of those feelings turned out to be a really bad guy.

When I was about 12, I saw a movie on TV. We had HBO, it would have been 1986. In one scene in this movie, a woman enters a bedroom. There, lying in the bed, is another woman, whom she knows. She’s naked from the waist up. The first woman says, “What are you doing?” The woman in the bed answers, “Waiting for you.”

The movie was Desert Hearts, released in 1985 and, according to Wikipedia, one of the first mainstream films to have a positive portrayal of lesbian sexuality.

I feel like I never forgot that scene, and “waiting for you,” the most soft, beautiful, loving words, were forever embedded in my memory.

Point Break has no such payoff — the gun firing in the air probably doesn’t count — but I did wonder, watching this film on the big screen for the first time two days ago — if there were any young men in 1991 who saw reflected in Johnny Utah’s face what they might have been experiencing, unable as yet to put a word to those feelings.

You could wonder about Keanu Reeves himself, too, because, well, why wouldn’t you? But like with the original post I made about Point Break (below), that’s another form of objectification. I’m also not sure it really matters. I eventually became aware that the lead actors in Desert Hearts were both straight women, but that didn’t (and doesn’t) detract from the movie’s impact on me, or how meaningful I still find it.

It is somewhat interesting that Keanu Reeves has (to my knowledge) never played a gay role (apart from Johnny Utah). But then, maybe that’s true of most actors of his generation — it just feels a little more obvious with Keanu because he had, and has, a queer-positive energy. In his private life, he could be asexual, pansexual, or something else on the spectrum — as an actor, as the podcast puts it, he’s a mirror and really may be just whatever you (and I) want him to be.

I’d seen Point Break a couple of times between my first viewing back in March and the joyful, communal viewing — god bless independent cinemas for late-night showings of old classics — two days ago. So my perspective on it had already moved somewhat from my original assessment. A lot of what I wrote in March, however, I still believe — including the line between objectification and ickification, and an unease with being so distracted by an actor’s stunning face and body when they’re just a good old-fashioned human being underneath.

Also, on the big screen: young Keanu is a fucking movie star. (So is old(er) Keanu, but this was my first viewing of young Keanu on the big screen in many, many years). Also, on the big screen: the action in Point Break holds up. That part, I may take back — although maybe it all depends on whatever mood you’re in.

July 2022

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[Original post from March 2022]

At one point in Matrix Resurrections, two characters are discussing the newly freed Neo.

“So what do you think of him?”

“I was a bit worried at first because he’s so much older. But the hair. The beard. Oh, it all totally works for me.”

Which is a meta-reference, really, to what the people with the money must have thought (and said) when Lana Wachowski fought to bring back The Matrix on her own and with her chosen actors, since, as the film says, Warner Bros. would do it with or without them.

Can Keanu Reeves play Neo again, in his mid-50s? Well, the hair, the beard. It’s all really working. So, yeah, let’s take a bet he can.

I never saw Point Break until last night. I had one overarching thought: Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

That face. That body. Holy fucking Christ.

Which, of course, is by design. Point Break doesn’t want us to think deeply about going to the edges of human experience, or fighting the system, or whatever else you can pretend this movie is about. It’s designed to make us look at Keanu Reeves for two hours, and to some extent Patrick Swayze. Nice abs, Patrick, but you’re standing next to Keanu, so the game was over before you ever even stepped on set.

Let’s make one thing clear. Johnny Utah is a terrible FBI agent. Taxpayers pay your salary dude? At the end, when he threw his badge into the water after letting Patrick Swayze give his life to the ocean, I thought, thank god. No more terrible FBI agenting from Johnny Utah.

And the Patrick Swayze character is a really bad guy. You get no sympathy from me dude, not just for robbing banks, but for smiling when you show Johnny Utah a video of Tyler, kidnapped and screaming. How dare that character utter the word “spiritual” when describing surfing. How dare he tell Johnny Utah to “feel the energy of the ocean” so he can surf at night. How dare such a deplorable human being co-opt meaningful spiritual language — and how dare the makers of Point Break ask us to use it to find some redeeming quality in “Bodhisattva.”

You misogynist creep. Right now, for me, his only competition for creepy bad dudes that bug me is the character that Keanu Reeves played in The Bad Batch. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Apart from Keanu, the specimen that is Keanu, what kept me interested in Point Break was counting the number of recognizable faces. Hey, Gary Busey. Anthony Kiedis! I guess this song is going to be running through my head for awhile now. Oh, and there’s Phoebe’s creepy date from Friends. And whatever happened to Lori Petty?

Yup, and there’s a great love scene. It’s Keanu (Jesus. Fucking. Christ.). It’s Lori Petty. It’s beautifully egalitarian, spontaneous, in-the-moment. Yeah, I’m good with all of that.

But let’s talk about Keanu, because sometimes you just can’t avoid discussion of that face and that body.

And why would you, you ask? On a website about Keanu Reeves, where you’re systematically watching every single Keanu Reeves movie and thinking about something to say for each one, why would you avoid talking about that face and that body?

It’s complicated.

Back in 1985, Keanu did an interview with a CBC reporter. He was filming a tv movie called Young Again. Keanu was 20 years old, but as would be the pattern for much of his life, looks much younger.

In this clip, which lasts only about a minute, the female reporter stands a bit too close to Keanu. There’s a close-up shot of her face, and she repeatedly looks down from his eyes. At the end, she grasps his shoulder. It’s easier seen than explained, but here’s the upshot: it’s icky.

Of course, there may be a difference between reporters violating a young Keanu’s personal space and an actor tasked with showcasing his face and body as part of a film. But there’s the professional aspect of it too; although Point Break gave Keanu some opportunity to do action, it also was perhaps one of a series of films that forced him to rely on his looks. One wonders if a young Keanu predicted that would be his currency for a very, very long time, for better or worse.

(There’s also repeated ickiness when looking at young or even middle-aged Keanu, both on-screen and off. I’ll admit that may be just me, at least in part. I had a visceral, searing reaction to Trinity’s “you’d better get your hand off of me,” in Matrix Resurrections — but that feeling must have some kind of universal appeal, or it wouldn’t have been in the film. It’s the same part of me that feels a little bit sick when a man puts his hand on Keanu’s neck during a scene in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. Some people wouldn’t even notice. Others would have a visceral reaction: Take your hand off of him. Don’t touch him like that.)

It feels unfair to trap any performer inside their own image, which has a definite shelf life. But that’s exactly what happens; actors of all genders have to manage it, and do so usually by developing off-camera careers as producers and directors.

But Keanu has chosen, on the whole, to stay in front of the camera. In a way, that’s allowed us to age along with him, or to continue to root for him as he wanders through job after job, movie after movie, some absolute gems, others not so.

That is the business of course. But it’s not a necessary part of the business, for people of any gender. Even The Matrix trilogy is about aesthetics, his and Carrie-Anne Moss’ primarily, for what other virtues those films bring.

So Point Break. If you want good action, choose John Wick instead. If you want outdoorsy adventure, well — you might have to go outside the Keanu canon. But there’s nothing like a little bit of Free Solo or Everest to make you long for the athletic prowess and the bravery to venture into the mountains. And although I don’t know any offhand, I presume there must be a killer surfing movie somewhere — with a true bodhisattva at the center.

March 2022