Daniel Craig Comes Full Circle: On Love is the Devil and Queer

Daniel Craig’s new starring role in Luca Guadagino’s adaptation of William S. Burrough’s classic beat novel Queer is a full circle moment for the actor. Receiving some of, if not the best reviews of his career, the character Craig plays—of a troubled older expat embarking on a charged affair with a younger man in Mexico—is the inverse of his breakout role from 27 years ago.

In Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait for Francis Bacon, Craig played the hot, young muse to Derek Jacobi’s tormented older artist. The film is based on the true story of the tumultuous love affair/war of attrition between Bacon—the most celebrated British painter of the post-war era, whose mix of figurative representation and abstract grotesquerie brought out the brutality in beauty and visa-versa—and George Dyer, a rough but sensitive small-time thief who literally falls from the sky into Bacon’s life. There’s was tragic story, ending as it did in the latter’s suicide following years of addiction and depression.

What reads on paper like a depressing slog is, in the hands of writer-director John Maybury (best known at that point for directing the music video for The Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls”), as entrancing as it is hideous. It’s an elliptical, literary, unabashedly artsy work that uses the techniques associated with the music video era—speed ramping, extreme close-up, fish-eyed lenses, expressionistic use of color—and alternatively highly detailed/Brechtian set design to bring, as much as is possible, Bacon’s signature aesthetic to life. The film is awash in a lonesome dread that, for whatever reason, seems to have been a specialty of ‘90s independent cinema, as seen in the works from that period from the likes of David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Paul Schrader, Claire Denis, Derek Jarman, and others.

(One of the key figures of queer cinema, Jarman’s influence looms the largest, which makes sense given Maybury was his protege. Maybury brings along Jarman collaborators Karl Johnson and Tilda Swinton, who turns in a memorable performance as the acid-tongued proprietress of Bacon’s member’s only club and den mother to London SoHo’s queer set.)

More than just sound and fury, these stylistic choices are of a piece with the film’s portrait of love, which, as one character describes it, is indistinguishable from unhappiness. This is a harsh, honest look at a relationship between two believably unpleasant people: Bacon, for all his genius, is a bitchy, cruel narcissist; while George is, in the words of his lover/patron, “a combination of amorality and innocence,” at least up until he starts breaking down, at which point he becomes clingy and vindictive.

And yet, for as clear-eyed and unsentimental a portrait as Maybury paints, it is not cold-hearted. It may not contain the big, weepy scenes one expects from true life tales of star-crossed love, but the ending—abrupt though it is—is suffused with the overwhelming feeling of void that comes from losing someone close to you, even if (especially if) you intentionally pushed them away. It is a dark film, but not a nihilistic one; as Bacon says sincerely at one point, “I’m profoundly optimistic about nothing.”

Both Jacobi and Craig rightfully earned plaudits for their portrayals of the real-life figures. Craig would use that acclaim to land bigger and bigger roles until eventually becoming a megastar after being cast as James Bond. Now that he’s retired from that franchise (even as he immediately landed another in Rian Johnson’s hit Knives Out series), he seems intent on doing the type of raw, humanistic work he made his name with.

Which brings us to Queer and that aforementioned full circle. It’s not merely that Craig is playing a gay character again, nor that he, at 56, has aged into the Jacobi role. It’s that Guadagino’s film has direct meta-connections to Love is the Devil

In Queer, Craig plays Bill Lee, the stand-in for Burroughs who appeared throughout his early novels. Bacon and Burroughs were both lightning rods for controversy thanks to their extreme subject matter: violent, surreal, frightening scenes that were openly, even aggressively queer. While their styles and viewpoints were different—one of Burroughs’s quotes about said difference, “He likes middle-aged lorry drivers and I like young boys,” finds its way into Craig’s mouth in Love is the Devil—they found in each other kindred haunted spirits.

They met one another when Burroughs was living in London, and again in Tangiers, in the 1950s. Tangiers holds a special importance in both men’s lives: the ancient Moroccan city was where Burroughs fled after shooting and killing his wife, Joan Vollman, during a drunken game of William Tell; and it was where Bacon spent time with his first serious lover, Peter Lacey. The latter’s relationship was built on brutality, both consensual—Bacon’s taste for S&M is depicted in Love is the Devil–and non-consensual, with Lacey nearly beating Bacon to death on more than one occasion.

Bacon and Burroughs would eventually leave Tangiers and go on to achieve a level of fame and acclaim neither could have foreseen, and they would remain friends until their deaths five years apart, in 1992 and 1997, respectively. Along with the quote about their taste in sexual partners, Love is the Devil also includes a sly reference to Dr. Benway, the sinister figure that haunts the pages of Burroughs’s most famous novel, Naked Lunch (as well as its brilliant film adaptation, which would make a hell of a great, if queasy, double feature with Love is the Devil). 

Between Craig’s star, Guadagnino’s heat (especially post-Challengers), and the A24 brand, Queer is coming out (no pun intended) with a lot more hype (and money) than the BFI-produced Love is the Devil. Hopefully, the built-in audience for the new film will find their way to its spiritual predecessor. It deserves to be seen for many reasons, but foremost amongst them, as a study for a portrait of its leading man.

Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait for Francis Bacon” is streaming on Kanopy and Hoopla.

Zach Vasquez lives and writes in Los Angeles. His critical work focuses on film and literature. He writes fiction as well.

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