Watched: Predestination (2014).
Early on in this film - a high-concept sci-fi thriller about an attempt to prevent a bomber from leveling ten blocks in New York City - the central character, Jane, undergoes sex reassignment surgery without her knowledge after she gives birth. Faced with a new body, she adopts the persona of a man, and eventually grows into the role of John, above. If this sounds like a hamfisted transgender story, it’s because it kind of is; that said, I’m not sure it’s unwarranted.
The film is a period piece, taking place over the middle of the mid-twentieth century (the surgery takes place in the mid-1960s), and intersex individuals being subjected to “corrective” surgery, with or without their informed consent, wasn’t exactly uncommon (though it was more often done at birth, an idiosyncracy for which this film does make some effort to cover).
I’ve thought about this for a while, and focusing purely on this issue, I think it does a decent job of getting to grips with a time where the word “transgender” barely existed, and definitely wasn’t in common usage; Jane/John is less a character who embodies a transgender narrative, and more an example of how living a role can mold you over time. And I think that’s enough - there should be a place for stories about gender that aren’t muddled by ugly background politics, and medical malpractice, and so on, but to deny that those politics ever existed (and still do, to a lesser degree) or that doctors were for a long time rolling the dice and making some seriously flawed decisions feels like an erasure of history.
It’s worth saying, too, that this film could have been a lot more ugly in the way that it played with sex and gender - without spoiling the plot, the fact that the central character transitions is essential to the wider science fiction narrative, and that fact could have meant that it ended up being a throwaway detail that the film just rushed over. As it is, the story ends up being much more about identity politics than anything else, and that works in its favor - the science fiction services the humanity of the characters, rather than the other way around.
Sarah Snook (above, as John) does a fantastic job in this movie of portraying both feminine and masculine identities, to the point where it can feel like watching two different actors. Ethan Hawke, definitely in a secondary role (despite all press materials to the contrary), is also on good form here, resolving much of the mystery in the latter third of the film. This is definitely a mind-bender in a way that Interstellar kind of wasn’t, though there are some hints that shrewd observers will figure out early on.
I’m willing to accept that I’m wrong about this - while I know plenty of transgender people, it’s not an experience that I’ve lived myself, and for all I know this could be utterly offensive. But I don’t think it is. It feels like it’s making an honest attempt to grapple with the subject, and I think it delivers.