‘Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders’ Review: Jeffrey Schwarz’s Doc Explores The Infamous William Friedkin Film With Mixed Results [Tribeca]

Often, when choosing which documentary to review, the title does a lot of the heavy lifting. Take, for example, Jeffrey Schwarz’s newest film, “Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders,” which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Its three-word title gives you everything you need to know. A documentary about the Mineshaft and the 1980 film “Cruising”? Count me in. But oddly, while the title does do much of the legwork in setting up the film, its simple three words also hint at the film’s structure problem.

It’s about the Mineshaft, it’s about “Cruising,” and it’s about the murders that inspired the film, but mainly treats these three as almost discrete objects of study. Anyone who’s seen the William Friedkin and Al Pacino film “Cruising” will remember the infamous leather club that Pacino’s character visits. Modeled on the Mineshaft, an infamous leather bar in the meatpacking district, that film almost doggedly recreated the club when they were denied permission to film on site. An exploration of the cultural and historical context of the Mineshaft, especially in relation to queer history, and the sexual excesses of pre-AIDS New York in the 70s and ’80s, would make for an engrossing documentary. An entire film could be made about it. But, oddly, only a short section of Schwarz’s film concerns itself with Mineshaft.

Then, we have the actual film “Cruising,” a lightning rod that shot through the LGBTQIA+ scene when it was filmed in New York City in the late ’70s. Protested by the very subculture it sought to shed light on and eventually disowned by its star, the film has a complicated cultural reception. It’s one of the few films to take the leather subculture seriously, but also wraps that exploration in a trite and sensationalized story of a heterosexual cop’s introduction to the scene through the investigation of a series of murders. It’s very obviously made by outsiders looking into a subculture with a type of fishbowl curiosity. Still, it was also ahead of its time and remains an artifact in Friedkin’s directorial oeuvre. The film itself is such an odd curiosity of Friedkin’s directorial preoccupations, while also being somewhat incomprehensible in its plotting and thematics…

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