“People like Stacie and I are ordinary people. And we want nothing more than that all are treated equally”. That says a terminally ill woman in a wheelchair after a district representative meeting in Ocean County, New Jersey, on January 25, 2006.
Especially it has been held there surprising that Laurel Hester policewomen-board, just like in the case of married colleagues, is transferred to their registered partner Stacie. For this they had to fight for three months in the face of death.
were documented this struggle and this statement in Cynthia Wade’s Oscar-winning short documentary “Freeheld” from 2007, the people touched on many, mostly gay and lesbian film festivals and finally the Academy persuaded. Laurel Hester died on February 18 last year to her cancer. Your partner Stacie Andree lives thanks to said board today in the common house
A heroic fight against discrimination, a love that can withstand all obstacles, an initiative troubled citizens and activists, finally, the victory of the right thing at the last moment -. It not long before someone in Hollywood came up with the idea to form this into a feature film that would reach more people than a 40-minute documentary.
A Writer was found Ron Nyswaner to its merits, it belongs to have treated the subject of AIDS in a Hollywood mainstream film ( “Philadelphia”). Finally, a lead actress, Ellen Page, which many among the most charismatic young stars of US theaters.
Page looked at the documentary, told and fought for six years for the feature film project, eventually even as a co-producer, until it finally came to the big screen. A year earlier, she had outed himself; at the premiere in September 2015 she moved with her partner Samantha Thomas on the red carpet.
helplessness of the US film system
Perhaps you have the feature film ” Free hero “that starts now in German cinemas, see as an expression of helplessness of a US film system. A system that is likely to have long, let how to tell the arrived in the social mainstream stories of lesbian, gay and transgender minorities. Gladly it draws on the reconstruction of past victorious battles back – in Hester’s state of New Jersey can gays and lesbians marry Since 2013, there have currently more rights than in Germany.
The Battle of the potential of exciting, complex film stories about women, especially about lesbian women, however, is far from being decided.
The public outing of Ellen Page actually still worried for excitement and lets worry about their careers appear to be realistic. And the well-integrated into the Hollywood system Writer Nyswaner distanced himself in September 2015 made public by the revisions of his “Free Hero” -Drehbuchs, the ( “de-gayed”) had been systematically “enthomosexualisiert”.
What could he so mean?
The history Laurel Hester, as it captures the documentary from 2007, beginning with a turbulent meeting of district representatives and ends with the burial of Hester, obtained in the feature film an equally long history. She tells the beginning of the relationship with Stacie, mainly to keep but the difficulties of the pair, their love for superiors and colleagues of the policewoman secret. This is about the slow acceptance of a lesbian identity, one late, given the extreme, can communicate with the outside.
The historic Laurel Hester was too college times a member of a lesbian activist group and had quite their superiors informed the police about their sexual orientation. In feature film she appears as a woman who has learned to say anything about her private life. Rightly so Nyswaners writer or its revisions suggest – because the colleagues are largely homophobic and do not want to be used for the cause of a lesbian.
discrimination and identity crises
Here is a crucial difference to the documentary begins with touching solidarity statements from the police officers. Together with Hester and Andree, with LGBT activists from “Garden State Equality” and with angry Bürger_innen the district, ask again the district representative, “to do the right thing”. They should take the individual fate as an opportunity to opt for equality and against discrimination – what they do eventually.
In the movie, however there is no scene that is not the potential for conflict of the story elaborates: homophobia, structural discrimination, lesbian identity crises.
The wonderful Julianne Moore as a dying victim of a defending of grumpy old men bureaucracy and the equally dedicated Ellen Page as mastered by feelings of inferiority partner play a lesbian couple in a homo hostile world. In this, people must first overcome time itself or be convinced by others from the fact that the struggle for their lesbian colleague is a struggle for universal equality and justice.
If the movie from the beginning decide on the perspective of people who insist gracefully on their rights and do not accept the doubts, fears and prejudices of their environment, he had time and attention to the great feeling moments Cynthia Wade in her documentary casually captures: the solidary hair-cutting of Stacie, as her friend turn out by the chemo hair; the video message Hester, the illness can no longer come to the meeting; the signs with the solidarity in the windows in Laurels neighborhood.One would invent conflicts, if one were the historic Laurel Hester Story really do give the strength to be a very own Hollywood material.
Peter Solletts “Free Hero” dear hand takes another unnecessary attempt to rob a story so much any poetry until it fits into the boring formulas of male, white and heterosexual Hollywood mainstream.
In video: The trailer for “Free hero”
“Free hero”
USA 2015
director: Peter Sollett
script: Ron Nyswaner
Cast: Julianne Moore, Ellen Page, Steve Carell, Michael Shannon, Luke Grimes, Josh Charles, Mary Birdsong
production Endgame Entertainment
rental: Universum film
length: 104 minutes
Rated: 6 years
Start: April 7, 2016
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