Chapter 77
Leaving the behind-the-scenes drama aside, the question is: is it a good film?
The answer is unequivocally yes.
It’s more than good. It’s a brave film, in the best ways: not only in telling a historical gay love story—and it is very, very gay; Jillian Poe and her cast don’t shy away from sex scenes—but in the raw emotion and power of the storytelling and the relationship. It’s the kind of film that gets remembered as a landmark: what good filmmaking can do. And it’s worth seeing, not only for the attention to period detail or the reminder that gay people (and Black people, Indian people, and others; we see an impressively diverse London, especially among Will’s Home Office fellow recruits) have always existed in history, but for the sheer emotional experience. Steadfastis a romance, unashamedly so, and it wants you to fall in love, and you will.
The casting and the script are spot-on, to start.