The Birdcage: Watch it as an act of rebellion!

Robin Williams, Nathan Lane and Hank Azaria are hysterical! Elaine May's adaptation is brilliant. You're gonna feel so much better.

Nathan Lane, Robin Williams, Gene Hackman and Diane Wiest in The Birdcage (1996). Directed by Mike Nichols. Screenplay adapted from La Cage aux Folles by Elaine May for MGM. Photo: Advertising still, MGM.

One of the most disappointing things about the dark underbelly of conservative religious dogma in these times is the now-overt war against people of color, against people of non-Christian religious orientation, against women (in just about every respect)—and against LGBTQ+ folks.

The simple fact is that there have always been gay guys and lesbian women and bi-sexual people and people who had the distinct feeling that they were one gender trapped in the body of another. What possible difference someone else’s spirituality or sexual orientation could make to one’s own life is a mystery—unless the equation includes a variable called the desire to control other people, which, I suspect, is behind a lot of the current forays of some into the deepest, ugliest places of political and emotional violence.

Those of us who reached adulthood in the 1960s miss seeing rights burgeon and openness and acceptance of non-heterosexual gender expressions flourish.

So, in honor of DEI and as an act of rebellion against the phalanx of mind-control freks roaming the streets in ICE uniforms and pretending to be spiritual, I offer you one of the best movies—EVER. A classic, hysterically funny, brilliantly wise: the Hollywood remake of the 1978 French classic La Cage aux Folles, the screenplay of which was, in turn, written from the 1973 French-language stage play by Jean Poiret.

Synopsis (chapeau-tip: Roger Ebert)

The movie stars Robin Williams as Armand Goldman, the owner-operator of a drag revue on South Beach (Miami, Florida) called The Birdcage. He lives upstairs over his nightclub with Albert, played by Nathan Lane—stage name “Starina”—who headlines the show. Armand and Albert have been lovers for some 20 years. They are served by the Guatemalan “maid” Agador, played by Hank Azaria.

Armand, however, though resolutely gay, has a son named Val, who was conceived in a one-night-stand with one of Armand’s former fellow thespians. Val, now in college, has become engaged—to a girl!—and wants to bring her home to meet his dad, but not “Auntie Albert.” So Armand is going to see Val privately, but Albert discovers a bottle of white wine, which Albert doesn’t drink, suspects an affair, and falls into full-blown martyr, fueled in part by age and loss of beauty, but also because he is a flamingly flamboyant gay drama queen.

DOUBLE CLICK THE IMAGES BELOW.

After a brilliant meltdown scene, Starina performs and Armand meets Val out by the pool. Val announce that, at 20, he is about to marry the 18-year-old daughter off a conservative senator (Gene Hackman), who leads the Coalition for Moral Order. The Senator and his wife and the betrothed are heading down from up north to meet the Goldmans—as much to escape an exploding scandal surrounding one of the senator’s associates as to chum up with future in-laws.

Realizing their plan to have Albert attend their meeting with the Senator Keeley and his wife won’t work, Armand enroll Katherine, Val’s birth mother. She agrees, and Albert, distraught, is banished to the bedroom.

But Katherine gets stuck—we mean gridlocked—and will be late. And then … Albert appears in brilliant motherly drag and delivers some of the best scenes in the film.

Senator Keeley falls in love with Albert in mommy role. All seems fine for awhile, but slowly everything unravels and the Senator starts to leave, only to realize the press have followed him, eager to talk to him about the scandal involving his compatriot. Now the senator finds himself in a gay household above a gay cross-dresser bar.

Katherine, who’s arrived late only to precipitate the exposure of everyone and everything, bringing on the most touching scene of the film, in which Val, who’s been trying to hide Albert the whole time, introduces him/her as his mother.

Meanwhile, the script for this film, adapted from Poiret’s original by Elaine May, is completely brilliant, a triumph, a joy.

Nathan Lane gives the best performance in the movie, save one.

Hank Azaria as Agador Spartacus is beyond brilliant. But Azaria has mixed feelings about the role, as he fears he offended many gay men as “over the top” doesn’t begin to cover his masterpiece of a performance.

But, as in all farces, everything works well in the end. How the Keeleys manage to escape is a scene stolen by Gene Hackman.

I leave you with this, and encourage you to enjoy every kind of person there is. And watch this film as an act of rebellion.

P.S. Please forgive my typos … I gotta run!