MOVIE REVIEW: Portrait of Jason
Who is Jason Holliday? Well, he’s a black, gay hustler, raconteur and aspiring cabaret singer. Easy, right? Review over, g’night everybody, thanks for coming out. But of course it’s not that simple. Because Portrait of Jason breaks down the “protagonist” until you’re not quite sure where those kinds of boundaries lie, and in doing so, creates empathy with a person that might have seemed very different from yourself.
Let’s start with an easy one: the raconteur. Jason is a talkative man, spinning stories, singing songs and doing impressions. But, he’s not particularly good at any of those things. His stories don’t seem to go anywhere, and the punches to his jokes don’t really land. His singing voice is fine, but the way he stands is too stiff. And his impressions are lackluster to say the least.
This is all so tragic when you hear that Jason wants to utilize all of these “skills” to open a night club act. “Good for him,” you might think, “he seems a good sort.” But then you hear that he’s been trying to get this act together for years, to the point that it’s a joke among his friends. Those same friends have probably contributed a good amount of money to make the act come together, only to see Jason fail to produce any results. His latest scheme, and they do start to sound like schemes, is to get his doctor to lend him money. This time it will work, this time he’ll do it. Except it’s pretty obvious it won’t.
So what else is he? “A stone cold whore” to use his own words. “I can make you feel like you’re the most desirable person on the face of the earth.” Take that with a grain of salt, but the sentiment seems to be right. Jason is able to manipulate people to get what he wants. “Everyone in New York has a gimmick…mine is hustling.” Now it’s clear from the way he talks that “hustle” just means a way of getting money, not necessarily involving sex. He also works as a house boy, cooking and cleaning and that sort of thing, because it’s easy. He doesn’t want to work a nine to five, so he has to find other ways of making his money.
So he’s a black, gay, hustler. He’s one of the many marginalized people in society, and over the course of the movie, that’s what Jason comes to represent. It’s the only thing left: these signifiers that make him an outcast. But are those real? Surely not. It’s not race or sexuality that defines who a person is, right? Well, strip that away, and all you have left is a human being who has lived a life. He was beaten by his father, he’s stolen, he’s cheated and Lord knows he’s lied. In the end it’s that that makes Jason relatable: despite all the differences, we all have the same flaws, we’ve all made the same mistakes.
Portrait of Jason was filmed with a small crew with a single camera in a small apartment over the course of twelve hours. The entire movie is an interview with Jason, listening to his stories, asking him questions. But the portrait that Jason tries to paint is different from the one that the film provides. Rather than the glamorous night club singer with ages of experience in America’s seedy underbelly, we get a picture of a man who is dealing with his own flaws, as well as trying to find his place in a society that despises him. Despite his artifice, something genuine and human shines through. Even if what comes through is ugly, it is an ugliness we all share.
5/5 This is a tough sit. It can be boring. But if you can make it through you’ll never forget it.