The Big House

I saw this short two years ago at the Sundance Film Festival, and I regret I've never had the opportunity to see it again. This is a hard film to categorize. I've seen it called a "prison drama"; but I fear that will lead potential viewers to imagine a kind of action thriller where bitter rivals have it out with shanks...which this film definitely is not. One might be tempted to label this film "gay cinema," since it's about the intimate relationship between two prisoners; but that wouldn't be accurate, either, since neither character is gay. That's the whole point of this film: to show the kind of relationship that can develop between two heterosexual men who are forced by circumstances to seek from each other the intimacy they would normally seek from a woman. In a strange way, this film is a romance...though I fear that, too, gives the wrong impression, even if I emphasize "strange."

Not being a former inmate of "the big house" myself, my knowledge about sexual relationships in prisons comes from reading Stephen Donaldson, former president of the organization "Stop Prison Rape." This film is consistent with what Donaldson says about the relationships between "Daddys" and "catchers"--that is, between dominant men and the weaker prisoners with whom they pair up for sexual release (non-reciprocal) and a certain degree of emotional involvement. Judging from Donaldson's description, the Daddy/catcher relationship depicted in this film is unusually benevolent and sentimental. But it's clear that Rachel Ward has done her homework. This isn't some formulaic men-on-men fantasy. It's a realistic depiction of a kind of intimacy that those of us "outside the big house" are likely to have a hard time understanding. Ward wants us to understand it, and on the way she wants to problematize our thinking about sexual identity and masculinity. This isn't an Australian "Oz." It's a film with an academic agenda handled in a way that should make it accessible to a broad audience.