QUIET RADICAL
Queerness and eras collide in Daniel Monihan’s new film.
If you were a gay man in 1953 in New York and interested in cruising, you could go to the west side of Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, and stand along a railing if you were interested in getting picked up. Same thing for Central Park at 72nd Street. You would ensure to stand away from the street, so you weren’t hit by police cars when they jumped the curb for a raid. If you were lesbian… there was nowhere public to go.
New York was also lucky enough to have a number of functioning underground gay bars, like Julius’ and The Stonewall Inn. In Hollywood, The Windup Bar. In San Diego, there was The Brass Rail. In Kansas City, the Jewel Box Lounge. In the new film On Swift Horses, it’s the fictional Chester Hotel in San Diego.
In 1953, the Kinsey Institute published the results of a study with over 11,000 participants that 37% of men and 13% of women “had at least one homosexual experience to orgasm.” And yet, as the Lavender Scare had shown three years prior, any employees of the US government or military who were discovered to be queer would be fired. (Joseph McCarthy’s number two, Roy Cohn, who helped architect both the red and lavender scares, was gay.)
It’s difficult to find statistics on queer suicide in the 1950s, but a 2021 study by UCLA’s Williams Institute reported that 31% of LGBTQ people had attempted suicide, with 61% attempting it within five years of discovering one’s “sexual minority identity.” And bisexual people in the study were reported to be “1.5 times more likely to report suicidal thoughts and attempts, compared to gay and lesbian respondents.”
Regarding this new film, by director Daniel Minahan (who also directed the incredible Fellow Travelers from 2023), most critics have been blasé. It is based on Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 award-winning novel of the same name, and centers around a young married couple, Muriel and Lee (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Will Poulter), and his gentle brother, Julius, played by one of the heartthrobs of the moment, Jacob Elordi. The boys are Korean War veterans with plans to go west, leaving their native Kansas for California, or in Julius’ case, Las Vegas.
Julius, a hustler of various means, nocturnal ones included, takes a job in casino surveillance in the fast growing gambling town. Stuck up in an attic with little air and a lot of sweat, he meets Henry, a Mexican immigrant and fellow traveler, played by the fabulous Diego Calva (Babylon, 2022). Their connection is fairly immediate, and we are treated to a falling in love that Julius says “all feels like a dream.”
Newly settled as homeowners of a tract home in southern California, Muriel and Lee live a fairly quiet life, her working at a diner and he in a factory. She soon meets the brooding and attractive Sandra, played by Sasha Calle, who also lives in the neighborhood. Sandra becomes one of Muriel’s guides, and more, into the hidden queer world of the suburban 1950s.
Critics have found the film on the hollow side, pointing at psychological complexity without delving deeply, with flat performances. I thought so too for the first several scenes; it seemed like fair 1950s cosplay; the score wasn’t attuned as well as it could have been to the sequences and emotions; Daisy Edgar-Jones performance seemed very muted, and even bland.
Then I remembered the era. Courtesy and politeness reigned supreme in many public spaces in the 1950s. Most marriages were conventional. Many wives were quieter than their husbands, the norms of male leadership and privilege having yet to be adjusted. And some people are just quiet. Muriel and Julius become compatriots, in a distanced, difficult way, exchanging the occasional postcard and implied connection. In one scene, Julius tries to articulate it, seeking both an ally and to provide comfort to his sister-in-law. “We are all just a hair’s breath from losing everything,” one of Muriel’s new acquaintances in the town says, and whom we learn has similar secrets of their own.
Then I started to appreciate the performances, and began to see beyond the blandness. The film does justice to both primary queer stories, giving equal screen time to the lesbian story as to the gay male one – which is not something we typically see in culture of any kind. (Of the nearly 50 LGBTQ bars in New York City, only 6 are lesbian – and only two or so are well known.) In 1953, there were three primary places where queer trysts could take place:
A private residence (the safest, depending on the people living there)
An underground bar or hotel (safe until the police showed up; homosexuality was illegal until 1962)
A public place (dangerous)
So how did most hookups and relationships happen for queer people? Quietly.
Today, for those of us closer to middle age, the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing reports that “Midlife and older adults who identify as LGBTQ+ experience higher rates of loneliness (49%) compared to their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts (35%).” Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) showed us a gorgeous, tragic portrait of the queer female isolation experience. Andrew Haigh’s quiet but powerful All of Us Strangers (2023) captured perfectly the sense of queer male isolation so many of us feel.
The rendering of the love affair between Julius and Henry is electric and gauzy, full of warmth and longing, although fraught and near doom. The relationship between Muriel and Sandra is tinged with even more sadness, as Muriel is faced with the impossible challenge of negotiating her identity within her heterosexual marriage. Many people, queer people included, might say, “Oh, it’s obvious her marriage won’t work, because she’s a lesbian.”
Which is where On Swift Horses breaks ground in a way that very few pieces of art and culture do. We see with our very own eyes that she enjoys the touch, the connection, and the sexual fulfillment with both sexes. Even today, in our culture of inclusion (for those of us who still believe in it), the reality feels radical: she is bisexual.
As the film went on, I grew to appreciate the qualities that many found hollow and thin at first sight and sound, myself included. I began to understand them as metaphors for the realities of queer life, regardless of the decade. Without spoiling the story, the way it ends mirrors the way so many of our stories still play out. Some of us break away. Some of us pursue second chances. And some of us retreat.
Watching Edgar-Jones, in dress after fabulous dress (including an ice blue number that sings with blue tinted glasses and red lipstick), listening more than speaking, mustering bravery in a world with very few options, making something of herself, dividing her personas between straight and queer, safe and dangerous, sexy and sexy – she captured something very precise about the bisexual experience: in a few, fleeting and glorious moments in life, you can have both of the things your heart and body desire; you can be both of the people you are. You can be with both men and women, a scarce reality that is still transgressive to most people on the planet and many people in the queer community. (You can be with anyone on the gender spectrum, too, but the film only shows us two genders.) She submits to her character with a silent vulnerability that reflects the many moments bisexual people spend pondering, wondering, longing and losing.
Her style of performance also flows very well with her fellow cast members. Jacob Elordi is right at home, lithe and loose, seeming to move through space rather than walk. Will Poulter, who has shown us his range in everything from We’re the Millers (2013) to Warfare (2025), dials down his fire to hum on the same level. Sasha Calle offers the only edge across the character set, her eyes belying the pain she has had to live with in a community in which she is an irrevocable other.
In Fellow Travelers, Matt Bomer’s character, Hawk, says what he wants most in life is “complete personal freedom.” The era in which we live is often the first determining factor to this quest. Our location is another. But our natural personality holds perhaps the most influence. We all know wonderful people who are “out and proud.” They are our friends, our neighbors. But there are just as many of us who are shy; who do not strike out, who wait for opportunity, who spend hours alone, wondering what to do. There is a scene near the end of the film, when the camera pulls back to reveal a whole range of people who are lost – either to their loved ones, to themselves, or to the era. It is a heartbreaking image, and a reminder of the staggering difficulty of being queer in an era in which it was unwelcome. And for some – impossible.
On Swift Horses is an imperfect film that captures a specific experience perfectly. Human connections and relationships are what matter most across the brevity of life, and yet, for some of us – those on the margins – so much of our life, psychological and physical, is spent alone. Director Daniel Minahan’s film is an act of connection as much as it is of art: let us remember the Muriels, the Juliuses, the Sashas. Find them. Love them. They’re alone – but they don’t need to be.