San Francisco-set dramatization one of year’s best
One of the best movies of the year opens today, and it also happens to be a quintessential San Francisco film that a smart theater programmer (Roxie? Vogue?) might put on a double bill with the award-winning 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk. Also based on a true story, Fairyland similarly captures a time and place in San Francisco history that makes the personal political and vice versa.
First-time feature director Andrew Durham adapts Alysia Abbott’s 2013 book Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father into an honest, poignant, beautifully rendered coming-of-age film. Durham’s picture is both a celebration of San Francisco’s warmth, community, and empathy and a painful reminder of the early days of the AIDS crisis, with all its attendant stigma, fear, and overwhelming sorrow.
Alysia’s memoir and Durham’s adaptation recount the story of how, in the early 1970s, after Alysia’s mother dies in a car accident, her closeted, now-widowed father Steve (Scoot McNairy, Narcos: Mexico; A Complete Unknown) moves the pair from the midwest and away from his concerned mother-in-law (Geena Davis) to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood. There young Alysia (Nessa Dougherty, a natural) is doted on by her father’s housemates and various lovers as Steve tries to balance his writing career, single parenthood, and his social and romantic pursuits.
As she grows up, Alysia, now played by Emilia Jones, star of 2021’s Oscar-winning CODA and currently appearing in the excellent HBO series Task, struggles with resentment of her father’s hands-off parenting. She’s embarrassed, too, of his lifestyle, as the bohemian ‘70s give way to the early ‘80s of Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaigns, Ronald Reagan’s ignoring the AIDS epidemic, and Alysia’s ignorant fellow students cavalierly making homophobic jokes. Steve is puzzled by Alysia’s ire, insisting that he wasn’t neglecting her when he left her alone as a young child, but instead was teaching her independence. Whether his motives were to help her growth or for his convenience is a question both Alyssia and the viewer are left to wrestle with.
What is certain, though, is that both Jones and McNairy give extraordinary, authentic, and sensitive performances that deserve year-end accolades, as does the picture as a whole. Durham deftly captures the way childhood memories stay with us and color our adult lives, as we see in a pivotal scene in which a stunned Steve realizes teenage Alysia still firmly believes a story he gently told her as a child about why he dates men. Durham skillfully layers themes of nature versus nurture, the limits and bonds of family relationships, and the role of extended community in a way that never feels preachy, but always complex and true. When Steve, close to the end of his battle with AIDS, remorsefully asks Alysia, “Was I a good parent?”, the message is clear: parenting is hard, and parents try their best. We realize, as Alysia does, that, in the end, forgiveness is what’s most important–for our parents, our families, our friends, and ourselves.
So yes, the film is a tearjerker, but an emotionally cathartic one that will leave you with hope along with grief. On a lighter note, Bay Area audiences especially will appreciate the extraordinarily vivid and accurate portrait Durham paints of San Francisco circa 40+ years ago. In much the same way this year’s Freaky Tales successfully recreated the Oakland and Berkeley of yesteryear, Durham’s references to the Quake, KFRC, the 22 Fillmore, KGO-News, the Palladium, the EndUp, and, of course, stunning shots of Golden Gate Park will tickle San Francisco viewers.
Fairyland premiered at Sundance back in January 2023 and played San Francisco’s Frameline Festival later that year, along with other film festivals. Its long journey to wider distribution was well worth the wait. Don’t miss it.
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Fairyland is now playing, including at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater and San Francisco’s Balboa Theater.
