In ‘Queer,’ Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey share ‘unsynchronized love’ and a brutal ayahuasca trip
From its grunge rock and ‘80s pop soundtrack to the intentionally artificial backdrops inspired by old Hollywood studio films, “Challengers” director Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” is a trippy tribute to the life and work of Beat writer William S. Burroughs. Largely based on Burroughs’ unfinished novel of the same name, the film stars Daniel Craig as the writer’s alter ego — a loquacious, heroin-addicted expat living in 1950s Mexico City — and Drew Starkey as the younger man who becomes his obsession. Teeming with references to the “Junkie” and “Naked Lunch” novelist’s life and works, “Queer” portrays two men searching for connection but stifled by their own repressive tendencies and an era that views their desires as deviant.
“Luca put it beautifully in that, it’s not a story about unrequited love, it’s a story of unsynchronized love — in another time and place, yes, but not now,” Craig told NBC News ahead of the movie’s limited theatrical release on Nov. 27 (its nationwide release is Dec. 13).
“That’s the tragedy of the film: There’s a moment where you think, ‘This could be,’” he said. “And it’s not to be.”
“Queer,” which was almost exclusively shot on a soundstage at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, opens with a Sinéad O’Connor cover of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” in a nod to frontman Kurt Cobain’s own affection for Burroughs, a writer known for his public aloofness and icy, obscene wit. From there, the film loosely follows the plot of the Beat novelist’s slim book, composed during a tumultuous handful of years living in Mexico City to avoid drug charges — before shooting and killing his wife, allegedly, during a game of “William Tell.”
Like Burroughs’ protagonist, Craig’s convivial but haunted William Lee wanders the streets and bars of the Mexican capital looking for his next drink and unsatisfying sexual encounter, until he comes across a moody and mysterious ex-soldier named Eugene Allerton, played by Starkey. Awakened from years of drug-fueled apathy, the older expat forms a slavish attachment to the younger man whose reticence only fuels his yearning.
Transfixed on the idea of mind reading, Lee entreats Allerton to accompany him to Ecuadorian jungles in search of a hallucinogenic root that he imagines will give him telepathic powers. But whereas Burroughs’ book ends with the characters empty-handed, the film, penned by “Challengers” screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, climaxes with a balletic sequence where the men are intertwined in desire while tripping on ayahuasca.
“It’s the moment in the movie where they get synchronized, and they become one,” Craig said, riffing on his earlier comments about the characters’ ultimately “unsynchronized love.”
The intimate encounter — which brings Guadagnino’s vision of the men as star-crossed lovers, rather than moths to a flame, into focus — is all too eye-opening for Allerton, who abandons Lee. And shortly after, the film descends into a series of dreamy vignettes, which like the disillusioned protagonist being left in the jungle, are drawn from other devastating bits of Burroughs lore.
