Review: Come see me in the good light
We love Andrea Gibson's poetry; no one else captures the quirks and intersections of queer love, privilege, desire with such honesty, compassion and humour. Like so many people, we hoped that they would live a long and blessed life and grieved when we heard their cancer was considered incurable.
Come See Me In The Good Light is the story of the final few months of Gibson's life. It is a beautiful, heart-breaking and important documentary directed by Ryan White that has already won multiple awards. We are shown Gibson, and their partner Megan Falley, negotiating an uncertain life in a film that is both a tribute to Gibson and testament to the couple's extraordinary love story.
“Gibson, a former touring spoken word poet whose fearlessly unbridled, unminced words on life and mortality once sold out rock clubs, is uniquely qualified to stare down the big feelings, to wrangle and put words to the fragile and brittle subject of dying.
But its primary feat is one of direct, unvarnished honesty, addressing ironies that would feel too neat if they weren’t so poignant and true ... How Gibson must decide whether a potentially life-extending experimental treatment is worth the possibility of permanently losing their voice. How gender confusion, dysphoria and fluidity, long a focus of Gibson’s work, seemed to melt away with the real specter of death. “I don’t know myself by my gender any more – it’s almost like your identity itself sort of drips off of you, it sort of falls off,” they say.
Gibson died in July, at the age of 49, surrounded by Falley, their parents, their pets, several ex-girlfriends and incalculable love. The date goes unmentioned in the film, and there is no footnote. It ends, instead, some time before that, somewhere between life and death, Gibson vibrant on screen and vibrating with wonder: what a glorious thing, to be alive. What a gift to carry on.”
Despite the subject, the film is uplifting and humorous (but have a box of tissues ready). You can watch the Apple trailer here and find more about Andrea and their poetry on Andrea's Instagram.