Ira Sachs had been talking about making some version of The Man I Love , his vividly sad but vibrant drama set in New York circa 1984, for over a decade by the time the moment to do it had arrived — and yet it was only well after production when he realized where it all came from. This was an instinctual work, mined from decades of memory. Sachs took on his first job in New York in 1984, then lived through a decade or so of “deep, painful and also transcendent experiences of gay life.” That informed the texture of The Man I Love as much as the aftermath of the pandemic, during which Sachs confronted his increasingly intertwining relationships to art and mortality.…