Beautiful movie that packs the emotion as it slowly unfolds in front of us.

The performances are really touching and delivered honestly without hype.

I just recommend that you watch it.

An additional note. Congratulations to those who decided to shoot this film in black and white. I have long held the view that colour (I do love colour movies) can often be a distraction from detail and that emotion etc can be overlooked. For example if you take colour away from Transformers (and I do like the first 3!) then you may find the lack of story and depth to be exposed as the colourful, shiny bits are removed. With 1985, the absence of colour allows us to see more.

Special!

In 1985, Adrian Lester (Cory Michael Smith) goes home for Christmas to visit his conservative Texas family. He struggles to come out of the closet to his father (Michael Chiklis) and mother (Virginia Madsen). He reconnects with his childhood love Carly (Jamie Chung). He reluctantly tells her about his devastated life in NYC and fears the news surfacing to his beloved younger brother Andrew.

It's a black and white indie. It's reminiscent of a 1985 indie. Its style is static. With B/W, Adrian holding back secrets, and the static shooting style, it does have the sense of sadness and death but it also has a sense of a slow grind. Texas has great visual potential but this is not doing any of that. The problem with holding the secret for so long is that it forces the movie into stall mode. There is a reason why Adrian and Carly together have the best scenes. It would have been better to come out of the closet early and then reveal the darker secret later. With the oppressing black and white, I would have liked some color to accentuate some of the scenes. Overall, there are some compelling scenes but the style is too static.

When dramas about AIDS came out in the mid 1980s. Broadcasters were at pains to show this was not a 'gay' disease.

Sweet as You Are was a BBC film that starred Liam Neeson as a lecturer who got HIV after a brief affair with a young woman. Only the American television movie, An Early Frost had a lead character who was gay that contracted AIDS.

1985 goes back to the days of Reagan's America, AIDS along with homosexuality had a lot of taboos and false information surrounding it.

Filmed in stark black and white. Adrian Lester (Cory Michael Smith) visits his conservative Christian parents in his hometown in Texas for Christmas.

Adrian has been living and working in New York and not been home for three years. He is dying of AIDS and is struggling to tell them about it. This could be his last Christmas. His lover has already died.

Over the next few days, Adrian reconnects with his younger brother Andrew who might also be gay. Adrian goes to see his former high school girlfriend Carly and finally tells her about his sexuality. The reasons he went to New York to start a new life and his illness.

As for his parents, Adrian cannot just bring himself to tell them the truth. However his father Dale (Michael Chiklis) and mother Eileen (Virginia Madsen) sense something is wrong. The money that Adrian has spent buying them presents. Dale even tells Adrian that he knows that Adrian is gay and that he can talk to him even if he is unhappy about his lifestyle choice.

1985 is a small scale drama. It is set in a time where there was speculation that AIDS could become widespread once it emerged that this was not something that just affected homosexuals.

The beauty is the small things in this movie which are all too real. Adrian trying to wake his younger brother before going back to New York and Andrew is still asleep. Adrian who visited to say his final goodbyes to his parents and tell them everything. He goes back saying nothing. Something that happens to many people. Even the high school bully who has regrets about his past behaviour. In some many films the bully remains a jerk.

The religious aspects of the movie is heavy handed. I can understand if his parents think Madonna's music is too much for Andrew but Bryan Adams!

The scene with Adrian chatting with his mother in the bathroom might be unrealistic. It allowed Eileen to show that she has her own mind, she confesses to voting for Walter Mondale. It would also mean that she could see the lesions in her son's body.