Gabriel is looking at the fire. Constantine approaches and the wings Flare Out. Constantine looks at the creature that is called the strength of God. The display is designed to scare. I don't know what to do if I am afraid. I'm going to mark me down as horny. Gabriel turns and they are wearing a big tie, a blue button down, and no makeup on. I had always thought of Gabriel as a man, even in the Hellblazer comics, but this was a different version of the archangel.
I mean it when I say I was changed. In 2005, this film came out, and for 15-year-old Linda, who was weird, queer, made to go to church and study the Bible as a child, who grew up in the South and loved stories, the idea that Gabriel could be something else. There is a third unknown, different thing. It's amazing. When I tell you that I will not give a negative review for this film, I mean it. It's perfect for Gabriel.
A series of career choices centered around dismissing gender as an inconsequential side-effect of death has been made by Tilda Swinton. The film adaptation of the gender-fuckery/bisexual time-travel romance novel of the same name by Virginia Woolf featured Swinton as the title character. The story of a poet who changes genders and lives for hundreds of years is called Orlando. They are both romantically pursued by both men and women. The book is considered to be a landmark piece of romantic queer literature because of the number of gender non- conforming people it meets. I would argue that the vampire character in Only Lovers Left Alive plays with gender as well.
Gabriel is not the only one who occupies this third-thing space, as the film is obsessed with crossing boundaries, challenging authority, and destroying binaries. It's half-in, half-out anyway. Over the course of the film, there is no rule or piece of lore that isn't broken. The final third act of the movie shows that Gabriel is trying to release the anti-Christ on the Earth. In a fit of jealousy, Gabriel was defeated, and Constantine was saved, as they emerged from the pool. It isn't holy whatever they are now.
At the end of the film, Gabriel wears an all-white outfit that emphasizes a more masculine shape. They act as an agent of chaos. They are trying to create a new thing that is both better and worse. Gabriel, servant of God, adherent of heaven, the holy messenger, is moving towards a purpose of their own creation, one that destroys our expectations for what Gabriel, angel of the Lord, is supposed to be. Gabriel is told at the end of the movie that he can be the hand of God if he chooses to be. Gabriel is talking about himself as well. They have always been free to make their own decisions. God's plans won't go down well. That's right, literally.
Gabriel didn't just fuck with genders, they fucked with everything. Gabriel is not defined by simply crossing gender boundaries, but by being defined in the film as crossing every boundary.
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