The Crying Game
Encyclopedia
The Crying Game is a 1992 psychological thriller
Psychological thriller
Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller with heavy focus on characters. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, along with the typical traits of the thriller genre...

 drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 written and directed by Neil Jordan
Neil Jordan
Neil Patrick Jordan is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award for The Crying Game.- Early life :...

. The film explores themes of race, gender, nationality, and sexuality against the backdrop of the Irish Troubles
The Troubles
The Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast...

. The original working title of the film was The Soldier's Wife.

The Crying Game is about the experiences of the main character, Fergus (Stephen Rea
Stephen Rea
Stephen Rea is an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto...

), as a member of the IRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...

, his brief but meaningful encounter with Jody (Forest Whitaker
Forest Whitaker
Forest Steven Whitaker is an American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television...

) who is held prisoner by the group, and his unexpected romantic relationship with Jody's girlfriend, Dil (Jaye Davidson
Jaye Davidson
Jaye Davidson is an American-British former actor and model. He is best known for his roles as transgender "Dil" in the 1992 suspense-drama thriller film The Crying Game, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, making him the first Black British actor...

) whom Fergus promised Jody he would protect. However, unexpected events force Fergus to decide what he wants for the future, and ultimately what his nature dictates he must do.

Plot

The film opens as a psychological thriller
Psychological thriller
Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller with heavy focus on characters. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, along with the typical traits of the thriller genre...

 - IRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...

 foot soldier Fergus and a unit of other IRA fighters, including a woman named Jude and led by Maguire, kidnap Jody, a black British soldier. The IRA demands the release of other jailed IRA members, threatening to execute Jody in three days if their demands are not met. While the amiable Fergus guards Jody, they develop a bond - much to the chagrin of the other IRA men. During this time, Jody tells Fergus the story about the frog and the scorpion
The Scorpion and the Frog
The Scorpion and the Frog is a fable about a scorpion asking a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the...

.

Jody persuades Fergus to meet his girlfriend, Dil, after he is killed and make sure she is all right. The deadline set by Jody's captors passes and Jody is to be executed. Fergus takes Jody into the woods to carry out the sentence. However, Jody knows that Fergus is no murderer at heart, and makes a break for it. Sure enough, Fergus cannot bring himself to shoot the fleeing Jody in the back, but Jody is instead accidentally run over and killed by British armoured personnel carrier
Armoured personnel carrier
An armoured personnel carrier is an armoured fighting vehicle designed to transport infantry to the battlefield.APCs are usually armed with only a machine gun although variants carry recoilless rifles, anti-tank guided missiles , or mortars...

s as they suddenly move in to assault the IRA safehouse. With his IRA companions seemingly dead after the attack, Fergus hides from the main body of the IRA in London, where he takes a job as a day labourer with the alias "Jimmy". While in London, Fergus meets Jody's attractive girlfriend Dil at a hair salon. Later they talk in a bar, where the next evening he sees her singing "The Crying Game
The Crying Game (song)
"The Crying Game" is a song written by Geoff Stephens. It was first released by Dave Berry in July 1964. It reached #5 on the UK Singles Chart. Then-unknown session guitarist Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan played guitar in this song.-Song history:...

".

Fergus still suffers from guilt about Jody's death and sees him in his dreams bowling a cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 ball to him. He continues to pursue Dil, protecting her from an obsessive suitor and gradually falling in love with her. Later, when he is about to make love to her in her apartment, he discovers that she is in fact a pre-op transwoman. His initial reaction is of revulsion. Rushing to the bathroom to throw up, he accidentally hits Dil in the face, leaving a bruise, and leaving her on the floor by herself. A few days later, Fergus leaves Dil a note, and the two make up. Despite everything, Dil is still attracted to him. Around the same time, Jude unexpectedly reappears in Fergus' apartment. She tells him that the IRA has tried and convicted him in absentia. She forces him to agree to help with a new mission to aid in assassinating a well-known official. She also offhandedly mentions that she knows about Fergus and Dil, warning him that the IRA will kill her if he does not cooperate.

Fergus, however, cannot overcome his compassion for Dil, who continues wooing him. He shields her from possible retribution by giving her a haircut and male clothes as a disguise. The night before the IRA mission is to be carried out, Dil gets heavily drunk and Fergus has to escort her to her apartment, where Dil asks for him to stay with her. Fergus complies, then admits to Dil that he had an indirect hand in her former boyfriend's death. Dil, drunk, appears not to have understood, but in the morning before Fergus wakes up she ties him to the bed. She unwittingly prevents him from joining the other IRA members and completing the planned assassination. Holding Fergus at gunpoint, Dil forces him to tell her that he loves her and will never leave her. Dil unties him, saying that, even if he is lying, it is still nice to hear his words. Dil then breaks into tears.

Just then, a vengeful Jude comes into their room with a gun, seeking to kill Fergus for missing the assassination. Dil takes several shots at Jude, hitting her in different places, whilst stating that she is aware that Jude was complicit in Jody's death and that she used her sexuality to trick him. Dil finally kills Jude with a shot in the neck. After finishing her off, Dil then points the gun at Fergus, but lowers her hand, saying that she cannot kill him because Jody will not allow her to. Fergus prevents Dil from shooting herself, and tells her to hide out in the club for a while. When Dil is gone, he wipes her fingerprints off the gun and allows himself to be arrested in place of Dil.

The epilogue
Epilogue
An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...

 takes place a few months later - Fergus, in prison, is visited by Dil. Dil, after talking with Fergus about plans once he gets out of jail, asks him why he took the fall for her in the first place. Fergus responds, "As a man once said, it's in my nature." He tells her the story of the frog and the scorpion that he heard from Jody.

Cast

  • Stephen Rea
    Stephen Rea
    Stephen Rea is an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto...

     as Fergus
  • Miranda Richardson
    Miranda Richardson
    Miranda Jane Richardson is an English stage, film and television actor. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and has won two Golden Globes and a BAFTA during her career....

     as Jude
  • Forest Whitaker
    Forest Whitaker
    Forest Steven Whitaker is an American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television...

     as Jody
  • Jaye Davidson
    Jaye Davidson
    Jaye Davidson is an American-British former actor and model. He is best known for his roles as transgender "Dil" in the 1992 suspense-drama thriller film The Crying Game, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, making him the first Black British actor...

     as Dil
  • Adrian Dunbar
    Adrian Dunbar
    Adrian Dunbar is an actor from Northern Ireland, best known for his television and theatre work. Dunbar co-wrote and starred in the 1991 film, Hear My Song, nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the BAFTA awards.-Personal life:...

     as Maguire
  • Tony Slattery
    Tony Slattery
    Anthony Declan James "Tony" Slattery is an English actor and comedian who has appeared on British television regularly since the mid 1980s, most notably as a regular on the Channel 4 improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? As a film actor, both comedic and serious, his credits include The...

     as Deveroux
  • Jim Broadbent
    Jim Broadbent
    James "Jim" Broadbent is an English theatre, film, and television actor. He is known for his roles in Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Topsy-Turvy, Hot Fuzz, and Bridget Jones' Diary...

     as Col
  • Birdy Sweeney
    Birdy Sweeney
    Edmund "Birdy" Sweeney was an Irish actor and comedian.He was born in Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland and gained his nickname "Birdy" from his childhood ability to imitate bird calls which he demonstrated on BBC Radio Ulster...

     as Tommy
  • Ralph Brown
    Ralph Brown
    Ralph William John Brown is an English actor and writer, known for playing Danny the drug dealer in Withnail and I, the security guard Aaron in Alien 3, DJ Bob Silver in The Boat That Rocked, and the pilot Ric Olié in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace...

     as Dave

Production

Neil Jordan
Neil Jordan
Neil Patrick Jordan is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award for The Crying Game.- Early life :...

 first drafted the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 for The Crying Game in the mid-1980s under the title The Soldier's Wife, but shelved the project after a similar film was released. He sought to begin production of the film in the early nineties, but found it difficult to secure financing. Potential investors were discouraged by his recent string of box office flops, as well as the difficult themes of the script.

The film went into production with an inadequate patchwork of funding, leading to a stressful and unstable filming process. The producers constantly searched for small amounts of money to keep the production going and pay disgruntled crew members. The film was known as The Soldier's Wife for much of the production, but Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

, who was a friend of Neil Jordan, counselled against the title saying that audiences would expect a war film
War film
War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...

.

Release

The film was shown at festivals in Italy, the US and Canada in September, and originally released in Ireland and the UK in October 1992, where it failed at the box office. Director Neil Jordan, in later interviews, attributed this failure to the film's heavily political undertone, particularly its sympathetic portrayal of an IRA fighter. The bombing of a pub
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

 in London is specifically mentioned as turning the English press against the film.(See List of terrorist incidents in London, 12 October 1992.)

The then-fledgling film company Miramax
Miramax Films
Miramax Films is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films. For its first 14 years the company was privately owned by its founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein...

 decided to promote the film in the US where it became a sleeper hit
Sleeper hit
A sleeper hit, a.k.a. surprise hit , refers to a film, book, single, album, TV show, or video game that gains unexpected success or recognition...

, earning $62 million at the box office. A memorable advertising campaign generated intense public curiosity by asking audiences not to reveal the film's "secret" to their friends. Jordan also believed the film's success was a result of the film's British/Irish political issues
The Troubles
The Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast...

 being either lesser-known or completely unknown to American audiences, who thus flocked to the film for what Jordan called "the sexual politics."

The film earned critical acclaim and went on to be nominated for six Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

, including Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Actor in a Leading Role (for Rea), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Davidson) and Best Director. Writer-director Neil Jordan
Neil Jordan
Neil Patrick Jordan is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award for The Crying Game.- Early life :...

 finally won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film went on to success around the world, including a re-release in Britain and Ireland.

Critical reception

Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 gave the film a four-star rating and described it as one that "involves us deeply in the story, and then it reveals that the story is really about something else altogether." Later, during Siskel and Ebert's annual "Memo to the Academy" program, Gene Siskel
Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal "Gene" Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death....

 gave away the surprise twist of the film while giving his review, which infuriated Ebert.

Considering its discussion of race, nationality, and sexuality, much has been written about The Crying Game. Theorist and author Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam, also Jack Halberstam, is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. Halberstam was an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC...

 analyzes the conflicting visual representations of transpeople in cinema focusing specifically on The Crying Games twist. Looking for transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

 gaze in film, Halberstam argues that Dil's transvestism and viewer's placement in Fergus's point of view reinforces societal norms instead of challenging them.

Awards and nominations

The film received 6 Academy Award nominations, and winning one:
  • Best Original Screenplay - Neil Jordan (Win)
  • Best Picture
    Academy Award for Best Picture
    The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...

     - Stephen Woolley
    Stephen Woolley
    Stephen Woolley is an English film producer and director. He is best known for his work with director Neil Jordan, which has resulted in a number of critically acclaimed films including the Oscar-winning The Crying Game....

  • Best Director - Neil Jordan
    Neil Jordan
    Neil Patrick Jordan is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award for The Crying Game.- Early life :...

  • Best Actor
    Academy Award for Best Actor
    Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...

     - Stephen Rea
    Stephen Rea
    Stephen Rea is an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto...

  • Best Supporting Actor
    Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
    Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

     - Jaye Davidson
    Jaye Davidson
    Jaye Davidson is an American-British former actor and model. He is best known for his roles as transgender "Dil" in the 1992 suspense-drama thriller film The Crying Game, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, making him the first Black British actor...

  • Best Film Editing - Kent Pan

Soundtrack

The soundtrack to the film
Soundtrack album
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television program. In some cases, not all the tracks from the movie are included in the album; however there are rare cases of songs in the trailers that do not appear in...

 was produced by Anne Dudley
Anne Dudley
Anne Dudley is an English composer and pop musician, and was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in both the classical and pop genres. She is perhaps best known, however, as one of the core members of the synthpop band Art of Noise and also as a film...

 and the Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are an English electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasional guitar, and Chris Lowe on keyboards....

. Boy George
Boy George
Boy George is a British singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by...

 scored his first hit since 1986 with his recording of the title song - a song that had been a hit in the 1960s for British singer Dave Berry
Dave Berry (musician)
Not to be confused with English 1960s singer Mike Berry.Dave Berry is a British pop singer and former teen idol of the 1960s...

. The closing rendition of Tammy Wynette
Tammy Wynette
Virginia Wynette Pugh, known professionally as Tammy Wynette , was an American country music singer-songwriter and one of the genre's best-known artists and biggest-selling female vocalists....

's "Stand by Your Man
Stand By Your Man
"Stand by Your Man" is a song co-written by Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill and originally recorded by Tammy Wynette, released as a single in September 1968 in the USA...

" was performed by American singer Lyle Lovett
Lyle Lovett
Lyle Pearce Lovett is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Active since 1980, he has recorded thirteen albums and released 21 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, "Cowboy Man"...

. Tracks 9 through 16 are orchestral, composed by Anne Dudley and performed by the Pro Arte Orchestra Of London.

The film's soundtrack was released on February 23, 1993 as The Crying Game: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album.
  1. "The Crying Game
    The Crying Game (song)
    "The Crying Game" is a song written by Geoff Stephens. It was first released by Dave Berry in July 1964. It reached #5 on the UK Singles Chart. Then-unknown session guitarist Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan played guitar in this song.-Song history:...

    " - Boy George
    Boy George
    Boy George is a British singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by...

  2. "When a Man Loves a Woman
    When a Man Loves a Woman (song)
    "When a Man Loves a Woman" is a song recorded by Percy Sledge in 1966 at Norala Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama. It made number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B singles charts. It was listed 54th in the List of Rolling Stone magazine's 500 greatest songs of all time...

    " - Percy Sledge
    Percy Sledge
    Percy Sledge is an American R&B and soul performer who recorded the hit "When a Man Loves a Woman" in 1966.-Early career:...

  3. "Live for Today" (Orchestral) - Cicero
    David Cicero (singer)
    David John Cicero is an American singer and keyboardist who was signed in 1989 to Spaghetti Records, a record label owned by Pet Shop Boys...

     and Sylvia Mason-James
    Sylvia Mason-James
    Sylvia Mason-James born in 1959 is a British singer who has worked extensively as a backing vocalist and solo artist.She started her career with the disco band Voyage in 1977....

  4. "Let the Music Play" - Carroll Thompson
  5. "White Cliffs of Dover" - The Blue Jays
  6. "Live for Today" (Gospel) - Cicero
  7. "The Crying Game
    The Crying Game (song)
    "The Crying Game" is a song written by Geoff Stephens. It was first released by Dave Berry in July 1964. It reached #5 on the UK Singles Chart. Then-unknown session guitarist Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan played guitar in this song.-Song history:...

    " - Dave Berry
    Dave Berry (musician)
    Not to be confused with English 1960s singer Mike Berry.Dave Berry is a British pop singer and former teen idol of the 1960s...

  8. "Stand by Your Man
    Stand By Your Man
    "Stand by Your Man" is a song co-written by Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill and originally recorded by Tammy Wynette, released as a single in September 1968 in the USA...

    " - Lyle Lovett
    Lyle Lovett
    Lyle Pearce Lovett is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Active since 1980, he has recorded thirteen albums and released 21 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, "Cowboy Man"...

  9. "The Soldier's Wife"
  10. "It's in my Nature"
  11. "March to the Execution"
  12. "I'm Thinking of You"
  13. "Dies Irae
    Dies Irae
    Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...

    "
  14. "The Transformation"
  15. "The Assassination"
  16. "The Soldier's Tale"

See also

  • Transgender
    Transgender
    Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

  • Cross-dressing
    Cross-dressing
    Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...

  • Transfeminism
    Transfeminism
    Robert Hill defines Transfeminism as "a category of feminism, most often known for the application of transgender discourses to feminist discourses, and of feminist beliefs to transgender discourse". Hill says that transfeminism also concerns its integration within mainstream feminism...

  • Transgender in film and television
    Transgender in film and television
    This article lists many films whose primary character are transgender. It also includes films of note who have a secondary transgender character.-Film and video:...

  • List of transgender-related topics
  • Twist ending
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