Vito

Although I am a gay man, from the same generation and roughly the same age as Vito Russo, I'm reviewing this movie as a movie, rather than as a documentary about the gay rights movement.

There are lots of documentaries about that movement, but none of them are great movies. This one is. It is fascinating from beginning to end.

There's not one bit of martyr worship in this movie, as there always is in movies about Harvey Milk, for example. Vito, the movie, is just as smart and funny and honest and gentle and riveting and uncompromising as Russo was himself.

He was such a marvelous man that there's no need to paint him as a hero or a martyr or as anything else but just himself. I never felt like I was being preached to or manipulated in any way at all while watching this movie. I was just being allowed to visit with a really fantastic human being.

What a treat this movie is! I feel now like Vito is an old and very dear and very delightful personal friend. I look forward to meeting him for real when I get to where he is now.