'The Circle' and 'The Case Against 8'

"When I came to Zurich, I thought it was the most liberal city in the world," says one member of the city's gay community in The Circle, a documentary that recounts a moment in European gay history both troubling and fascinating -- one that serves as a reminder of how quickly a liberal facade can shift to repression.

Following World War II, Zurich was a relatively liberal outpost in Europe. Homosexuality was not a criminal offence in Switzerland, unlike in Germany, and a gay subculture thrived as a result, drawing so many weekend tourists that, according to one journalist interviewed in the film, Lufthansa Airlines' Friday night flight from Berlin to Zurich became known as the Queen Hansa Express.

At the centre of the subculture was The Circle, a magazine and social club that organized regular dances for Zurich's gay community. The magazine was subscription-only and mailed in nondescript envelopes to protect its readers, the most cautious of whom eschewed receiving it entirely and came instead to the magazine's offices to read the latest issue.

Featuring a mix of sensual photographs and articles, The Circle pushed the rules of censorship as much as it could: When it came to photographs, it took advantage of the allowance for full-frontal nudity in pictures of statues or works of art; and because the censors did not speak English, the editors reserved the raciest material for articles published in that language.

Stefan Haupt's documentary, screening during Vancouver's DOXA film festival, tells the story of the magazine and Zurich's gay subculture -- focused on Ernst, a teacher and one-time editor at the magazine, and Röbi, a drag queen who performed at The Circle's dances. The two are the documentary's heart-warming centre -- an exceedingly adorable couple who met through The Circle in 1956 and, in 2003, after decades of hiding their relationship from even some of their closest relatives, became the first two gay people to get married in Switzerland.

Lives at stake

The Circle relies largely on dramatic recreations to tell the story of the magazine and Ernst and Röbi's relationship. The staged scenes account for more than half of the film, an unusual decision on Haupt's part that, frankly, is more distracting than illuminating. Whether due to low production value or a perceived need to make it absolutely clear that the historical scenes are recreated, many of the dramatizations have the theatricality of a Heritage Minute video.

The interviews with the real-life Ernst and Röbi are far more evocative, particularly as the doc increasingly focuses on how, in the late '50s, their once seemingly liberal city deteriorated into hatred and discrimination following the murder of several gay men. In the aftermath, blame was quickly assigned to the victims, deemed at fault for leading sexually promiscuous lives. The Circle's events were soon shut down and subject to violent police raids.

The dramatizations actually work well here, particularly to convey the double lives Ernst, Röbi and their friends were forced to lead, as well as the devastating consequences -- the breakdowns and depressions -- that resulted from the violence and discrimination.

Through the stories of Max, a high school principal at Ernst's school, and Karl Meier, the editor of The Circle who at one point asks his fellow club member "not to stir things up unnecessarily," we witness the tragic damage done to those who worked to appease those in power and secure a base level of permissiveness, only to be persecuted when circumstances changed.

The Circle ends with Ernst finally coming out of the closet completely after his mother's death in 2000 and then getting married to Röbi three years later. A testament to Ernst and Röbi's survival, it's a joyful conclusion that would be unimaginable just a few decades earlier, when their lives were at risk.

Contrast that to The Case Against 8, Ben Cotner and Ryan White's documentary, also showing at DOXA, about the legal battle to overturn Proposition 8 in California, which was passed in 2008 to define marriage as solely between a man and woman. The Case Against 8 ends with matrimony as well, but here, after a five-year case that reached the Supreme Court and with popular support for gay marriage on the rise, the prevailing sentiment is one of overdue victory -- of justice finally done.

Clearly the team that brought the case against Proposition 8 forward -- led by the dream team of David Boies and Theodore Olsen, each one of the top liberal and conservative lawyers in the U.S, respectively -- had a great deal of confidence in their case. Apart from allowing Cotner and White unfettered access, they also had reporter Jo Becker record the story. (Her book on the case was recently excerpted in the New York Times Magazine and is drawing controversy for sidelining many of the key LGBT activists who fought for gay marriage before Boies and Olsen joined the fray.)

A marriage made for Hollywood

Ultimately, The Case Against 8 is a conventional documentary, particularly compared to The Circle -- it's an interview-driven, chronological, behind-the-scenes look at the legal battle. It's also undoubtedly a tour de force of PR planning. The story it tells -- the best conservative and liberal lawyers in America, foes in the landmark Bush vs. Gore Supreme Court case, coming together to fight the greatest civil rights case since the 1960s -- is ready-made for a Hollywood treatment.

Yet, remarkably, the documentary precludes the need for adaptation. The courtroom speeches read from transcripts already have a Sorkin-esque loftiness. I can't recall another documentary that orchestrated such a Hollywood ending out of real life -- one complete with a final hurdle in the last scene, a last-second intervention from a high-level government official, and then wedding kisses to cap everything off. It's hard to imagine any writer achieving something that's more affecting, or that offers a more victorious portrayal.

Of course, the case does deserve celebration; the only qualm here is how often you can see the hands of a media strategy team crafting the ideal story. One could also argue that a documentary as celebratory as The Case Against 8 has come too soon. As the New York Times recently noted, there are still LGBT communities in large swathes of the United States who do not have any of the rights guaranteed by many of the country's coastal states.

But in this respect, the documentary's confidence speaks to our time -- to the feeling that in many Western countries, at least, that the tide has finally turned and that legal, social, and political victories for the LGBT community are set to increase exponentially.

That, no doubt, is a feeling worth celebrating. It only takes watching The Circle, and seeing a time when such hope was not so easily mustered, to fully appreciate its value.

The DOXA documentary film festival runs May 2 to 11. See here for screenings.