Mahershala Ali's majestic Swan Song
although Irish writer-director Benjamin Cleary's Swan Song (2021) quietly guides us into the near-future, the technology serves as a backdrop to the question that has driven dramatic arts for hundreds of years: what would you give up for the one(s) you love? their depiction of healthy Black love from courting to grief to co-parenting was beautiful, but i also saw the film as a meditation on masculinity and the global issue of how we are encouraged to tackle the trauma in our lives by ourselves, rather than asking those we love and who love us for help. not only is asking for familial help difficult, asking for professional help is shunned, and very few of us have the resources (financial and otherwise) to consistently seek healing as we try to survive the world that kills us slowly every day.
in Mahershala Ali’s first leading role in a feature length film, he plays Cameron Turner. Cameron, a handsome graphic designer, stands in for the audience as a terminally ill man who questions whether to create a clone of himself to live on in his place after his imminent death. and just like Eurydice could only return to life with her husband if Orpheus did not look back, Cameron's pregnant wife Poppy (Naomie Harris) and young son Cory (Dax Rey) can only live on happily if he does not disclose to them their beloved figure is a clone codenamed Jack (also played by Ali). meanwhile, the original Cameron will die alone in a remote hospice, grateful for the fact that they never know he is sick nor lose him "too soon."
but baby, baby, baby, this seeming act of selfless sacrifice is rooted in Ali's character suppressing his own feelings, a cloning process that questions the process of informed consent, and the ableism that drives how we see sick people as a "burden" on or inconvenience to those we love. the remaining paragraphs contain spoilers and are intended to be read with a spirit of generosity toward all those who came together to create the film.
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the script is padded with heightened stakes for us to better understand how and why Cameron chooses to commit to an ethically and morally fraught cloning process. first, he has painful and unpredictable seizures that strike at any moment. while this presents a plothole—no one in his household witnessed a seizure? ever?—it mostly represents how little time he might have left. this takes the decision-making process from "at your earliest convenience" to "now or never." second, their marriage is less-than ideal at the present moment. the loss of Poppy's mother and twin brother threw her into a deep depression from which he could not "save" or "protect" her and he drifted as a result. third, Poppy is two months pregnant. she believes this could really change things for the better for the whole family. fourth, Jack will have the process wiped from his memory at a later date, so he will not have to deal with the pain of knowing he is just a replica.
but Cameron's true break comes early on in the film through a memory. Poppy's twin brother Andre (Nyasha Hatendi), Cameron, and Poppy herself have a lighthearted conversation about the advances in technology where she admits that she would take a clone of her mother any day since losing her, as long as she truly could not tell the difference. Cameron jokes that he is staying out of it, letting the siblings decide for themselves what they would want. the inclusion of her twin brother in the conversation means even more because she later loses him in a tragic accident. while the scene felt a bit like too easy of an out from a writing perspective, it allowed us to see how Cameron rationalized deceiving his family. in writing this particular out, writer-director Cleary draws our attention to the motivations behind his decision and less on the ethics of the process.
the bulk of the essay that follows explores emotional intelligence, our relationship to ourselves, and masculinity, but i want to highlight a few important points that i do not elaborate on in the essay itself.
first, the actors did exactly what they needed to do. Mahershala Ali shined bright like a diamond, no rihanna, Naomie Harris was warmth embodied, and Glen Close played the hell out of that doctor.
second, i was bummed that Naomie Harris' Poppy Turner didn't have her own full world. she existed as a beautiful French-speaking, piano-playing survivor of intense grief. Harris gave her wit, empathy, and an interior life, but we really did not get to explore her outside of her connection to Cameron.
third, the three harbingers of a scenic not-so-distant future were an older (seventies) white woman doctor, an Indigenous man psychologist, a Chinese-Korean woman patient, and a Black man artiste patient. that's all, just wanted to note that.
fourth, the film is gorgeous, shoutout to production designer Annie Beauchamp. but why oh why is it the future earth created in science fiction either steampunk-warehouse-rust-and-gray or coke-white snow and open concept buildings ft. floor to ceiling windows? how was there only ever one car on the road at a time? why did the vehicle feel like a combination of a tesla, wonder woman's invisible jet, and the jetsons flying car? fentyway, let's get into the masculinity.
in a conversation carefully shepherded by Valerie Complex, writer-director Ben Cleary stated that he began writing the film after losing friends three summers in a row. he continues to say that he didn't know anyone in Ireland who had really been to therapy, so writing this almost a decade ago helped him process through his feelings. but the interview just confirmed what i thought of the lead character while actually watching the film: this man needs therapy. this was not just a script note, but a structural one, because this represents how we interact with each other as humans. it's real. and to that point, Dr. Scott (Glen Close) seems shocked when she finds out that Cameron has not talked to anyone about his stressors, signaling to the audience that when we're in distress, we should seek help. it made me wonder about how much less harm we would cause each other if we could easily and affordably rely on competent therapists—as well as other healers and modalities of healing—without stigma? especially, especially, especially men.
in a patriarchal world, popular notions of masculinity obviously most often harm those who do not identify as men and those who stray furthest from the "blueprint". that means cis and trans women, non-binary people, queer people of any gender, and so on. then men harm themselves as well. and i do not just mean men harming other men, but men harming themselves by trying to be what they think a man should be, doing what they think a man should do.
from a young age men are taught to hold in their feelings, which includes their pain. and when humans do not release our feelings in healthy ways, when we suppress them, we eventually implode or explode. this release of emotions can result in physical and emotional violence toward others, toward ourselves, and as a numbness to the world. but rather than structural and personal encouragement to develop the emotional intelligence that gives them the tools to express their feelings in healthy ways, men learn very young that they can remain emotionally immature ("boys will be boys") and outsource emotional labor to women and femmes. uncomfortable feelings? ignore them. deny them. internalize them. and if it gets too too bad, hope that your wife, girlfriend, partner, mother, sister, daughter, or some other "feminine" figure in their life will notice and rush in to save the day. maybe, maaaaaybe even ask them for help. what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?
there's a line between Cameron and his clone Jack where he is unkind to himself, but seemingly honest. he admits that if he had just mentioned the headaches when they started some time ago, Poppy would have rushed him in for an exam and they likely could have stopped the illness before it spread. but why must the burden be on his wife to take care of him? why must she notice something is wrong and take action, rather than him noticing and taking action himself? our chosen partners of any gender can and should take care of us and we must reciprocate that care, but we have to take care of ourselves as well.
statistically, men are much less likely to go to get mental health treatment or even attend regular doctors appointments than women. and adding in race, Black folks are less likely to go get the mental health help we need than white folks for a number of valid and depressing reasons. but this means certain groups neglect our health to our detriment until things get worse and/or someone swoops in.
Cameron feels like he cannot tell his wife about his rapidly declining health, right? and his reasons make sense, she's been through a lot. a lot a lot. but she went through that lot with him. he, without consulting her, decides to close her out of the blessing and curse of deciding whether he goes through his lot with her. by keeping his health status a secret, he must also keep his feelings about it a secret. in choosing the clone, he must experience both his material reality and his emotional reality alone. he has to go to doctor's appointments alone. he has to go through the five stages of grief that he experiences alone. his only company is that of the clinic staff and one other dying patient who underwent the same process.
worse yet, the clone is not a guarantee. less than five patients have undergone the process and even if everything works out after the credits roll, tomorrow is never promised. what if the baby does not bring them together? what if Cameron's clone dies just as early as he does? what if, what if, what if?
in choosing to keep this enormous secret, we watch as Cameron becomes more distant from his wife. choosing a surrogate version of himself because his death is imminent actually makes his last few weeks, days, hours, and seconds less honest, less meaningful, less intimate, and much more stressful. that's the problem with lies, they beget more lies that we have to keep up until it finally "works," we admit we lied, we lie more about lying, we ghost those in our lives, or someone dies. that's about it. it just gets worse from here. while we can justify the results of the lie, the reasons for the lie, we are the ones who have to live with our own guilt.
i think a lot about the white woman whose false testimony led to the torture of Emmett Till. she kept that lie until she was on her deathbed. she chose not to die with the horrid secret and i can't say it was a guilty conscience because i did not know that woman, but i do know that she told the truth when she knew death would reach her before any external consequences for her actions could.
i want to explore three scenes that demonstrate the emotional wedge Cameron inadvertently creates when he decides to lie.
the first two scenes refer to the baby-to-be. in one, Poppy notices that he is not well and asks what's wrong, affectionally calling him Bear. he bullshits. a real tear flows from a very real place but his words betray the tear’s source. he lies, letting her know that he's choked up because of how monumental it is that they're bringing a new life into this world, prompting her to pull him closer. we can see her fears and anxieties about his odd behavior melt away, replaced with a wave of appreciation and awe at how much her partner cares for the world they're creating.
in another scene, he quite literally responds to her with "that's real" like she’s just a homie when talking about their child-to-be. clearly distracted by the stress of the cloning process and decision, he plays it off again. Poppy feels these moments of omission, these moments of good-intentioned deception. i do not write that merely because Naomie Harris acts her ass off, but because i've been both characters in my own life and neither position feels good.
however, one of the things i loved about the film is thinking about the tension and surrender between Jack and Cameron as one's own relationship to self. through this lens, we can see how we sabotage and distrust ourselves, but we can also see how we love ourselves. i'm less interested in the former, as clone stories revolve around the feeling of being replaced/replaceable/forgettable/lost/hurt. this is very real and does make me wonder what makes me me, us us? however, Ben Cleary demonstrates the latter in the scene that closes out the film, now two weeks into the switch between Cameron and Jack.
framed as a gift that Jack left Cameron, Cameron watches footage of Jack asking his partner to help him meet his needs. for once. now, from a writing perspective, i want to note that he may have often asked for his needs from his wife prior to all the loss, but that pain changed things for them, so this is the first time we get to see it. i find that healthy communication like this is very rarely modeled in mainstream media and when it is, it can feel fake. this doesn't.
Jack asks Poppy to tell him that she loves him. she obliges with a genuine 'i love you', but he asks again, for both himself and Cameron. he asks because they both need it. Jack needs it to confirm that he is not just a device, a knock off, a fake. and Cameron needs it because he needs to know that the sacrifice was worth it. sharing the same mind but in two separate consciousnesses, Jack requests with what feels like a smile, in service of himself: "i need to hear it." this time, Poppy stops what she is doing to respond with her full attention, her full being. she gifts him with a loving affirmation of how deeply she care for him that clearly brings Cameron more fulfillment than words can convey.
in that moment, Jack and Cameron are no longer two separate, competing forces. it isn't a battle of "you aren't me" vs. "you created me." instead, a present him (Cameron) watches a past him (Jack) with the understanding that is is now also the future him, eliminating the separation between his selves that Cameron created in the cloning process. this parallels how we separate our past, present, and future selves, as if they aren’t all connected through our thoughts, actions, behaviors, and ensuing consequences.
despite both characters existing as flesh and bone, this scene represents a merging. and in merging, present him makes a sacrifice to prioritize future him, the him that will live on after he dies. the self watching is experiencing pain in the present, yes, but in service of providing for a future self that is not guaranteed, but is possibly better than the current one he inhabits. Cameron finally learns how to be gentle with himself and that is a lesson from which we can all take something.