John Greyson couldn't make a straight movie to save his life—in any sense of the word "straight." His gripping interpersonal dramas (Zero Patience, Lilies, Uncut) invariably deal with the lives and travails of gay men, but they also include some conscious artistic twist, a confrontationally unconventional method of jolting viewers out of complacent participation in the worlds he builds.
In Proteus, that world is Cape Town circa 1730, in a brutal Dutch penal colony where inmates can be beaten to death simply for harvesting wild-penguin eggs without permission. Two of the inmates have been particularly ill-used by their society: Rouxnet Brown, a native African, has been sentenced to 10 years' labor for minor protest against the white men who stole his village's cattle and massacred his people. Neil Sandilands, a grim Dutchman mostly referred to as "the sailor," has been convicted of sodomy, a common practice among the upper class, but still a potentially capital offense. When Brown first takes an interest in Sandilands, both men proceed warily. Comfortless lives and the casual viciousness of slavery make them both reluctant to let their hearts drift anywhere near their sleeves, and the love that dare not speak its name renders them mute.
Initially a complex morass of desire, contempt, caution, and curiosity, their relationship gradually becomes far simpler and cleaner, via a process that plays out mostly via cuffs, cruel jokes, tears, hurt looks, and hesitant personal gestures. Their byplay is subtle, beautifully acted, and beautifully orchestrated. By contrast, Greyson's heavy-handed symbolism, the jostling among the prison's overlords, and the entire complicated plotline involving English botanist Shaun Smyth often seem superfluous.
The same is true of Greyson's surreal, deliberate anachronisms. In a costume drama full of powdered wigs and tricorner hats, it's jarring to see transistor radios, cars, and plastic grocery bags, let alone the steno pool of beehived typists recording court testimony. Greyson sometimes gives the impression that he's observing a modern group acting out a drama within a drama, à la Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar; at other times, he simply seems to be reminding viewers that racism, homophobia, and institutional persecution aren't just past-century relics. But the modern touches are distracting, and they jostle uncomfortably against Proteus' serious tone.
Still, Greyson's muddled era-mixing makes Brown and Sandilands' world less real and less important, which contributes to the most impressive hat trick in a film that's impressive overall. Greyson manages to make everything outside the protagonists' liaisons—their initial rough sexual encounters, their later tender moments—seem as unimportant to the audience as it must seem to them. In the process, he does a terrifically empathetic job of putting viewers firmly in the moment, by making it irrelevant exactly when and where that moment takes place.