"The Imitation Of Life..."

 Keri Russell & Skeet Ulrich in "The Magic of Ordinary Days"

As a gay man, I learned from my earliest days to understand that I'll always live in a heteronormative world.  And so I often wonder why people say they can't understand same-sex love and find it unbelievable that we love in the same way as everyone else. Unlike the youth of today, until I was well into adulthood, the only stories I read and the only movies I saw that told of what love was did so by telling the stories of people who didn't look like me, but who shared many of the same feelings I felt, and I understood them nevertheless.  I realized early on that in the same way that you don't have to be black to understand much of the black experience if you try, you don't have to be heterosexual to understand love between two people, you just have to try.  I think this is why Brokeback Mountain was so shockingly well received and highly acclaimed... although there was no happy ending for Ennis and Jack, almost everyone, gay or not could understand that the film was about love and the human experience.  

Yesterday, I ran across this gem of a made-for-tv film from 2005 with the most unlikely of storylines, that surprisingly, I absolutely fell in love with.  It's one of those films that at the end leaves you wanting more.  I was so entranced by it that I couldn't imagine not being able to see it again, so I immediately ordered a DVD copy of it.  It's a multifaceted love story that reaches deep into you to tug at heartstrings you didn't know you had. And, even though there's not a single gay or black character in the film, I could identify with all of the characters in one way or another since their stories were just human stories of the most beautiful kind. 

This film easily and instantly found its way onto my top ten list of favorite films, and perhaps you'll like it too. Right now it's streaming for free on Plex and here is a "making of" video from YouTube that shares some of the actors' thoughts on the film.