The Crying Game

I was sixteen years old in 1992 when The Crying Game was released to theaters. I was not privy to the marketing campaign Miramax was aggressively pushing, trying to keep people from revealing the big mystery in the film they had just bought distribution rights to. This was a brilliant bit of promotion as it guaranteed two things: people would talk about it, and that talk would drive others to go see the outrageous things that were being said. I, of course, was not old enough to see it then, nor was I curious enough to seek it out, but I sure knew what that big mystery was. It seemed like everybody did. Us immature high school kids made fun of this film for a while until it dropped back out of the cultural zeitgeist, and our short-term memories moved on to other things to mock.

Some years later, I was perusing my local Hollywood Video and saw a copy of The Crying Game on the shelf. Memories of those days in high school came back, and I realized that, aside from the big reveal, I knew nothing about this film. Something compelled me to rent it that day and see just what it actually was about. There was no IMDb back then, and all I could go off of was the back of the box and the capsule review in my copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, something I always brought with me into the video rental store. The movie I saw that evening was not what I expected, but the word of mouth from my childhood did ruin certain aspects of the plot. Whether I would have figured out the twist ahead of time had I not known already, I’ll never know. The casting of unknown Jaye Davidson helps, but I had already seen him in Stargate by then and knew his face. Also, I was never really convinced from the start that Jaye was a woman. 

The story is told in two parts. The first opens in Northern Ireland, where a provisional IRA volunteer named Fergus (Stephen Rea) and a unit of other IRA members kidnap a British soldier named Jody (Forest Whitaker) and hold him ransom in exchange for the release of one of their members. If their demand isn’t met, they will kill Jody. Fergus and Jody begin to bond during his captivity, and Jody confides that he has a special girl back in London. He shows Fergus her picture and Fergus is intrigued by her image. When the deadline comes and goes, Fergus is ordered to execute Jody, but Jody flees from him only to be struck and killed by a passing British armored personnel carrier. The troops attack the IRA hideout, and Fergus escapes, believing all of his comrades have been killed.

The second half of the story takes place in London. Fergus has fled across the border and takes work as a day laborer. He tracks down Dil (Jaye Davidson), the girl Jody was in love with, working in a hair salon, and a love affair ensues. One evening, while they are preparing to get intimate, though, Fergus discovers that Dil is actually a transsexual male. At first, Fergus is repulsed and strikes her, but later, after some reflection, he apologizes in a note, and they reconcile. Around this time, Jude (Miranda Richardson), one of his fellow IRA members he assumed was killed earlier, reappears and coerces him, threatening him and Dil, into helping with an assassination plot against a British judge. 

It’s to director Neil Jordan’s credit that when viewing The Crying Game, the big twist that Miramax made such a big deal about is only a small part of a much more larger story. Once you get past any prejudices, if any, you may have for the transgender community, there is a compelling story in here. Jody tells Fergus the story of the Scorpion and the Frog, and that will be a theme here. Throughout the film, characters will do things that will get themselves killed but are seemingly incapable of acting otherwise. Fergus, on the other hand, never seems to have his heart in the IRA. Some lip service is given to him being the ideal man for the judge’s assassination, but we never get anything really to back that up beyond this statement being pure hyperbole. 

And that is where The Crying Game has its biggest weakness. Fergus is virtually a blank slate. We get nothing of his backstory nor why he is initially repulsed by Dil’s revelation. He seems at first to get over it, then uses his influence over her to alter her appearance to be more like a man. Is this an attempt to protect her from Jude and the others in the IRA should they try and use her as motivation against him, or is he more comfortable being intimate with a man than with a transgender woman? Their relationship is a challenging one for mainstream audiences, even now when the transgender community is far more prevalent than it was thirty years ago, and it is reverently handled here, but by splitting the story with all the IRA stuff, it has left too little time to really explore the depths of these characters. 

I mentioned earlier that there was no escaping the details of the gender reveal back in 1992. Whether the Weinsteins really believed their campaign would keep people from talking about it is debatable. It certainly didn’t work as that was all people were talking about at the time. From a marketing sense, though, it was a success. The film was a box office failure in its initial release throughout Europe and the USA. When Miramax shifted their advertising strategy to include the request to not spoil the big reveal, sales were boosted and the film became very profitable. Through the machinations of Harvey and Bob Weinstein, they even managed to propel it to a Best Picture Academy Award nomination that year. This was around the time when Harvey Weinstein was obsessed with the Oscars and was discovering new ways to circumvent the traditional ways of promoting pictures for Oscar votes. This would eventually come to a head when new rules were added to curb manipulating the voters. How effective those new rules are is itself debatable.

The one-two punch of The Crying Game and Stargate proved too much for Jaye Davidson, who found celebrity and fame to be unpleasant to deal with. He dropped out of acting shortly after Stargate and has since returned to modeling with only the rare bit part in other productions. Jaye’s physical appearance lent well to The Crying Game as he had to be convincingly female in order for that story to work. I cannot imagine how that sudden reveal would play on an audience member who had no idea going into this picture. There are hints, some pretty strong ones in fact, leading up to that scene that should have made it obvious though. It is confusing, however, that Dil claims she thought Fergus already knew, especially after their first night together when Dil is obviously preventing him from coming into contact with her male genitals. 

The Crying Game is more than just that shocking, at least in 1990’s cinema, gender reveal. Still, though, it struggles to give enough time to either of the stories playing out, which ultimately leaves it unsatisfying. There’s no doubt it helped further mainstream exposure to the transgender community, and it got butts into the theaters based entirely on the shock value. But beyond that, there is a compelling story that just didn’t get enough breathing room to gestate. The characters are all generic and one-dimensional, and the ending is abrupt and disappointing. This is a film that had so much potential, but it just doesn’t quite deliver on it all.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Stephen Woolley

Best Director: Neil Jordan

Best Actor: Stephen Rea

Best Supporting Actor: Jaye Davidson

Best Screenplay: Neil Jordan (won)

Best Editing: Kant Pan

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Release Date: September 2, 1992

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Stephen Rea, Miranda Richardson, Jaye Davidson, and Forest Whitaker

Directed By: Neil Jordan