To certain opiners on this thread, we know who you are:
Posted on 12/23/2005 5:39:51 PM PST by presidio9
When word got around among gay people that Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, hunky Hollywood hotties du jour, were set to play ranch hands who fall in love in the idyllic mountains of Wyoming, there was a certain giddiness: Tight Levi's galore! The homoerotic Abercrombie & Fitch catalog writ large! A mainstream, romantic, holigay cowboy movie!
Then a herd mentality started to sink in, like a gay church praying at the altar of "Brokeback Mountain." There's a countdown on Gay.com ("It's finally here!"), E-vites are landing in in-boxes ("Let's watch it together!"), and blogs are keeping tabs on the film's awards, including seven Golden Globe nominations — the most of any film this year. The message is: If you're a self-respecting homosexual, you had better see this film, pronto.
Yet what's most surprising about "Brokeback" is that it's not a gay film. Not in the way gay films, especially those about gay men, usually are.
This is not a film about gay men and AIDS, à la "Philadelphia," which won Tom Hanks an Oscar, or "Love! Valour! Compassion!," the film version of the Terrence McNally play. It's neither comedic nor campy, nothing like "In & Out" or "The Birdcage." It's no "Kiss Me, Guido" or "Trick" or "The Broken Hearts Club," all set in big cities, with stereotypical gay characters — a thespian with the perfectly decorated Greenwich Village apartment, a West Hollywood muscle queen hooked on drugs — trapped in flamboyantly worn-out narratives.
Love repressed
Based on a spare short story by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Proulx and directed by Taiwanese American Ang Lee ("Sense and Sensibility," "The Ice Storm," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), it tells the story of Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Ledger), two vagabonds whose lifelong affair begins in Brokeback Mountain on a chilly night in 1963.
They part ways, marry women who don't know their secret and have children, only to reunite four years later with a deep, fiery, longing kiss that is arguably the most passionate man-on-man kiss to have been put on screen.
"Theirs is a story of a love that was repressed," Lee, who is married and has two kids, says in an interview. "That's really what drew me to the story."
Year after year, spanning two decades, Jack and Ennis reunite at Brokeback Mountain, frustrated, scared, still in love — and giving new meaning to "goin' fishin'," the excuse they tell their wives.
There is one sex scene in the movie, which Lee describes as "animalistic," "spontaneous" and "aggressive"; it stands in stark contrast to the kissing scene, which is meant to be "sexy." If you don't buy that kiss, Lee adds, then you won't buy the love affair.
"It's not about sex"
The film's old-fashioned romanticism wasn't what some early viewers had expected. "It doesn't fit into the current gay culture as we know it. It's not about sex; I was actually surprised that there wasn't that much sex in it," says Jonathan Rosales, 21, a recent graduate of the University of Southern California who saw "Brokeback" in Los Angeles.
Joseph Wiedman, a 31-year-old lawyer who saw the film in San Francisco, adds, "The big thing is: The movie is really well done and really accessible, for gays and straights. It's not preachy, as one of my friends pointed out, and not at all political. It's very personal."
"Brokeback" pushes the boundaries on two fronts: It's a Hollywood romance, but with gay men; it's a gay film, but with broader, more universal themes.
"They can call it whatever they want to call it; just don't call it a 'gay cowboy love story.' That's upsetting to me," says Paul Pecoriano, 35, an actor and waiter in Manhattan.
"It's a love story, period," says Pecoriano.
And let's get something else straight: Love between two men can certainly be the focal point of a beautful. Films like Papillon come to mind. It is depictions of homosexuality and homoeroticism that are, without exception, nasty.
Appreciation is in the eye of the beholder.
Excerpt:
review Brokeback Mountain Brokeback Mountain: Brokedown Ideas
It’s long overdue, but I think the Brokeback Mountain backlash is finally gearing up. Widely hailed as the best film of the pre-Oscar season, and fresh from winning the top award at the Venice Film Festival, Brokeback Mountain is the current must see movie. The critics, sheep that they are, herded onto the bandwagon over opening weekend, following the cues that this is the film you’re required to like. Kudos to the marketing department at Focus Features -- the buzz was perfectly spun. Brokeback was the one you don’t question -- the Sideways of 2005 -- it carried the pedigree director and the pedigree subject matter, and was based on a pedigree short story from a pedigree short story author which first appeared in a pedigree magazine. It smelled of class, and so the zombie-fied reviewers gave it the stamp of approval, the sticker of USDA prime. But amongst people I know, the dissatisfaction and disappointment are beginning to grow. Promoted as the “groundbreaking” gay film meant to change the world, the audience is slowly realizing it has instead been sold a bill of goods.
The reviewer would say that you are attempting to sell a bill of goods -I do not buy this 'art' bill of goods -the 'art' of adultery and homosexual activity is nothing new and surely nothing to acclaim...
I'm just calling a spade a spade. Just because something is considered a work of art, or even a well made work of art, does not mean that everyone should buy into it, appreciate it, or even condone it. I certainly don't carelessly watch or suggest films that promote immorality, adultery, etc. Sadly, the Oscars are full of best picture winners that embrace such practices--back to 1932's Grand Hotel, and including such "classics" as Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, The Lost Weekend, From Here to Eternity, The Apartment, etc. Personally I think we as a society are just too wrapped up in films as a touchstone of our lives and civilizations. They're just another work of art, like a novel, or a painting, a vase, or even a piece of furniture or a building.
Well, love between two human beings is worthy.
This film ("BM") is not about "love" but about lust and deprivation and abuse. Unfortunately, that's what's appealing to those who find it so. Homosexuals consider an array of abusive behaviors of themselves and others as "love" and that's also the point as to why many of the rest of us consider their choices as deprived. Not to mention blind to the calling of God.
"BM" is NOT a film about "love" between two men, it's a film about depravities and abuse. Dressed up with bows, still depravity, still abuse, all those lives, including their own, destroyed, denigrated, consumed by all the wrong motives and behaviors.
Hi, escapefromboston:
According to Boxofficemojo.com and RottenTomatoes.com, it cost around $14,000,000 to make. It's made a little more than $7,000,000 so far. All it has to do is better than breaking even (cost vs. gross) to be declared a winner.
Jack.
A lot of people "familiar" with the "movie business" regard the trades as being unfamiliar with the movie business, so, you lose on that perspective.
You can't argue with the reality of box office. And exhibitor responses (upon which box office relies). You're suggesting that the FOX column by Friedman is rejectable because it's not, in your perspective, "familiar" with the "movie business" but I do know that FOX has a lot and offices right there in that "movie business" and actually makes a lot of business IN that "movie business."
I would have agreed with you had you taken off on the actual columnists, Friedman, however, given his eccentricity -- he does appear disconnected on many an issue but in this one column, earlier linked, he has quoted box office stats about "BM" and about those, they aren't lying, regardless of whether or not FOX, or Friedman, like or dislike the film, "BM."
"BM" is crap. It's like champaigne to people who think Gatoraide is a healthfood drink.
Like I wrote, "BM" is champaigne to people who think Gatoraide is a healthfood drink.
You work in the film industry, you are accustomed to the tastes and perspsectives of "a lot of gay people" and you've come to regard Gatoraide as a healthfood drink.
Quite seriously, there are a lot of conservatives (the actual ones) who work in the film industry who also participate on FR and elsewhere on the internet and we don't care for this film for all the reasons so well and previously expressed.
The film ("BM") will and has been playing well before audiences who are compelled by situation and target to predetermine toward being emotionally moved -- as in, reinforced -- by this film.
The film ("BM") will not play well if it even plays at all before other audiences and those other audiences are the majority of movie goers. There may be the mentionable target audience of young teen males who go to ridicule the subject matter but that's the only margin of change I can perceive here, and, perhaps, the other audience who will attend because they're mistaken by what they're going to see onscreen after the grandiose (and misleading) trailers that have now appeared on some cable stations.
In all due respect, "work(ing) in the film industry" and "being around a lot of gays" as you say you do and are is no basis upon which to write a review of this film. It means little other than you are noticably influenced, that I'd place you among that audience I previously described as those who are predetermined to "like" the film and be emotionally reinforced by what you see. It makes your world, your immediate experiences and surroundings, make sense, it reinforces to you that the world is "like the film industry where I work, that the world is sympathetic to this lust and abusive behavior I see before me just like the many gays I work around..."
But the average viewer is going to avoid this film. And they are.
The film contains graphically enacted anal sex between two male homosexuals.
That is NOT included nor mentioned in the advertising. IF it WAS, how many who have already been in theatres to "see" this film that is, supposedly, about "love" would be there?
The film contains graphically enacted anal sex.
It's pornography and it's no more about love than road dirt is about heaven.
To certain opiners on this thread, we know who you are:
That (^^) was not about YOU, little_jeremiah...
~;-D
You and I seem to live on different planets. Having some kind of political affinity for something has no relation to being moved by it, at least not for me. You may disapprove of homosexuality and the media that don't condemn it, but the movie sure as heck isn't crap, it's a great piece of filmmaking by any standard, and I'm not the only person on this thread who feels that way. I just plain don't see anything wrong with homosexuality in any way. The gay people I know lead lives that are no better and no worse, in terms of generosity, productivity, spirituality and their contributions to the community than the straight people I know. Jeffrey Dahmer was homosexual and Stalin was heterosexual. Aaron Copland was homosexual and Mozart was heterosexual. Evil and good, genius and villainy, ugliness and beauty are evenly distributed through all varities of humankind, and even all sides of the political spectrum. I volunteer at a nearby shelter for runaway kids, of which there are many in Los Angeles. Many of the kids are gay, because that's a big part of who gets beaten and abused and forced to hit the road. They are no different from the straight kids who are on the streets because of other kinds of abuse and neglect, trying to rebuild their lives, trying to get jobs and get off the street, but emotionally damaged by the shame and physical pain that have been heaped on them by bigoted, unloving parents. Do you think those kids are sinners? Do you think they CHOSE to be a certain way that would make their parents turn against them so viciously? I don't want to believe and can't imagine that you think their parents were right to beat them and throw them out into the world at age 11, 12, 13. I do know that I've been ZOTTED on this thread for an opinion that has been formed from simple observation of stuff going on in the world around me.
I'm curious: What do you think of the actions of parents who throw their gay kids out on the street?
I should add that when I first posted on this thread I hadn't ever taken the time to read the full list of "isms" the founders of Free Republic stood against. Now that that list has been brought to my attention, I'm not sure that my conservative instincts are of the right variety for this site.
I intend to see it for all the reasons you state. I just hear it's a good movie. I'm not pro or anti gay. I must confess I am not looking forward to the tent scene or the kiss -- a big "ick" factor for me -- but I believe the acting is amazing, and it's beautifully filmed.
I had to cover my eyes for a portion of the tent scene. But it goes by fast.
Happy New Year!
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