The June 28, 1969 revolt at the Stonewall Inn, a Mafia-run tavern in Greenwich Village, is hard to dramatize without committing all kinds of cinematic and dramatic sins. The German-born gay director Roland Emmerich has charged in where others have feared to tread. Sad to say, he has produced a complete travesty in Stonewall, a mishmash of campy dialogue and over-the-top acting that dances up to profound social/sexual change then beats a hasty retreat. The result may be illuminating only to grade-school kids, and perhaps only to the dull-normal among them.
The film's first sin is its failure to establish whose story is being told. The best evidence we have, compellingly detailed in New York queer historian David Carter's 2004 book Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, is that the week of tumult in and around that watering hole followed the arrest and brutalization of a "butch dyke" lesbian whose plight aroused a swelling crowd outside the bar to push back against aggressive police action. In the chapter "Lancing the Festering Wound of Anger" Carter writes, "The police, who had blithely assumed that since they were dealing with a bunch of fairies they would be unchallenged, found that it was as if the fey beings had suddenly metamorphosed into raging tigers. Police Inspector [Seymour] Pine, author of the U.S. Army's manual for hand-to-hand combat in World War II, later recalled, 'There was never a time that I felt more scared than I felt that night.'"
Emmerich and his screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz get into trouble when they ignore the rebellion's complicated roots in favor of relating the events of the three days that led up to the riot at the Stonewall bar via a handsome white boy, a fictional composite character from Indiana, Danny Winters (British-born Jeremy Irvine). A lengthy subplot is devoted to Danny's experience of being harassed by local kids while making out in a boyfriend's car, fighting with a bullying father, bonding with a kid sister, and finally migrating to the Village, where he gets a job as a supermarket stockboy.
It's at his job that Danny meets with the film's juiciest and historically most grounded character, the cross-dressing Ray Ramona (vividly brought to life by the terrific newcomer Jonny Beauchamp). Stonewall should be Ray's story, supplemented by an assortment of working-class lesbians, underage kids, barely legal dancing kids, and hundreds of other Gotham residents who gravitated to the bar for its spacious dance floors and cheap if adulterated beer and liquor. Beauchamp, who's been getting rave reviews for his emergence as a cultural force more than for his role in Stonewall, has one saucy line, when Danny refuses Ray's request for a handout at the supermarket. "Danny, you're turning out to be a real New York City cocksucker!"
Key roles are filled by screen actors with impressive resumes. The Irish-born Jonathan Rhys Meyers is Trevor, a fledgling gay activist who attempts to recruit Danny to the group's meetings; Ron Perlman appears as the Mafia bar manager Ed Murphy; Caleb Landry Jones is the colorful Village denizen Orphan Annie; and Matt Craven appears in the crucial role of Police Inspector Pine.
Stonewall fails to mirror the life of that day, as illustrated by an anecdote from Carter's book. Pine kept his officers inside the bar from firing on the rampaging crowd outside as they attempted to bash down the tavern's door and attack the cops inside. Carter relates how Pine gently tapped his officers on the shoulder and commanded that no officer fire his weapon on the crowd without his permission. Thus this "Lexington and Concord" of our queer revolution was spared an evening of serious bloodshed.
The movie does finally shift into gear in its third act, when some attempt is made to demonstrate how the crowd, both those attracted to the commotion and those who had been expelled by the police, mobilized to beat back the kind of police mistreatment that had occurred just a year earlier, at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In the end, Stonewall is a missed opportunity. One ponders how the story might have sizzled if entrusted to this generation's Billy Wilder, the Taiwanese-raised director Ang Lee, whose Brokeback Mountain, The Ice Storm and Taking Woodstock all showed an ability to tell complicated social-change stories with aplomb.
Those wishing to skip Stonewall' s deficiencies as both drama and history are encouraged to read Carter's book. Its well-paced narrative is augmented by detailed footnotes, a substantial bibliography, and great period photographs, especially a color photo that depicts the ragamuffin collection of street kids who fought back that night and for the next week. Another good slice of history can be found in Kate Davis and David Heilbroner's full-length documentary Stonewall Uprising.