Silverlake Life: The View From Here - Peter Friedman, Tom Joslin

Silverlake Life: The view from here – Peter Friedman, Tom Joslin
1993, 99 min

This movie was one of the ones I had to watch twice. The first time, I realized immediately I would want to watch it again. I had actually seen this movie my Freshman year, but was excited to see it again. I did take notes my first time watching it again, but I knew I would want to watch it again and pay more attention to taking notes.
In fact, both times I watched it I took very few notes. The parts of the movie I found so riveting were consistent throughout the movie.
The movie is a pure example of a Reflexive Documentary, but it is also interactive and interventionist, in that the movie took on its own life, became part of the Tom, Peter and __ lives, and created meaning and purpose at a time when both of these things were at risk of being lost. One scene that speaks to this is when Tom and Mark visit their therapist. Tom calls Mark a “doomsday aidser”, and they talk about their being a certain desperation to the video taping. The therapist then talks about their different approaches to having the disease. Tom, he says, is trying to lower the threat, whereas Mark is making the most out of what he has. This is poignantly followed by scene of with Tom videotaping from his bed. He shows us the tapes next to his bed, which are right beside his medicine, a monitor nearby which he can adjust to his comfort while in bed. The fact that everthing has been designed to be accessible for him when he is too sick to get out of bed, which he himself tells the camera, resonates with the previous scene.
The scene after this is equally potent, capturing a sentiment and question through a painfull shot of joggers running a race. Tom focuses in on their healthy, robust legs. They are a stark contrast to his pencil thin limbs. He runs along beside a jogger, at which point I was acutely aware of the physical feat this would represent to him.
“Do you think you’ll make it all the way?’ He asks. The jogger responds:
“With all these wonderful people and the entertainment I’ll make it all the way.”
The connection to Tom’s life here is very evident. Just to make sure you get the point, Peter Friedman adds this interaction in text as an inter-title. This is one of the few times we see, or are made aware of, Peter’s hand in the movie. Was he wondering what Tom was thinking in his head?
It isn’t a surprise when Tom dies. In fact, we know he dies from the very beginning of the movie. And yet, both times I watched it, I was hoping it would end differently. Mark and Tom’s openness to the public is a cause for wonder. While I think that the movie was made at least equally for them, as a vehicle for hope and meaning, as it was for us a vehicle for understanding “the view from here”, I feel indebted to them for making it.