Posted on 01/16/2006 7:28:11 AM PST by mcvey
Ang Lee’s BrokeBack Mountain is a movie that, on one hand, follows fairly conventional and well-trodden ground to a legitimate conclusion (well, not quite a legitimate conclusion, see below) and, on the other hand, indulges in a series of contrived plot devices to turn (or at least attempt to turn) a rather pedestrian effort into something beyond its all-too-conventional story line. The plot is simple. In a relatively short period of time, two people, away from home, indulge in a summer romance of forbidden love. After that summer, they return to their homes and marry people who would, in the normal course of events, be their expected mates. Still, they cannot forget each other and, after a four-year hiatus, they find ways to get back together, one being married at that point, the other, not knowing his future, about to find the “almost perfect” someone. They continue to meet using a commonly-shared hobby as a means to get away from their spouses. Over the next fifteen years or so, they grab a few days here and a few days there to carry on their romance. At this point, the resemblance to “Same Time, Next Year,” and dozens of other movies about illicit loves away from home, is overwhelming. Then, after a fight, there is, for dramatic purposes I gather, a breakup. After the fight, one partner is killed for his tendency to stray over his community’s boundaries with illicit affairs. The spouse covers up what really happened. The other partner tracks down the dead man’s parents (whom he has never met) and has what can only be called an awkward moment of “good-bye.” The star-crossed love affair, in what is a bad paraphrase of “Romeo and Juliet,” ends with one partner dead and the other living a half-dead life in a beat-up trailer in the middle of nowhere. Lee does, at the very end, add a moment of regeneration, but then, drawn more to the message than the plot, leaves the move with a soggy (perhaps meant to be a tear-jerking) coda.
This is a fair summary of the plot. As such, it is no better than a “B” movie and should be treated as such. It will probably win an Academy Award since Lee uses (and I do mean “uses”) two bisexual men to make the plot seem remarkable. It is not remarkable and it is a shame that this hackneyed piece is getting so much attention. It suggests why foreign films are just simply so much better than American films these days. This is not to say it is terrible—but it is more Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as written by someone with severe depression than it is Baudelaire. I find Hanks and Ryan amusing, this I found boring and I emerged feeling used myself. Not completely, though. The photography is excellent and some of the shots are beautifully framed—one scene where one partner disappears into the dark with a male prostitute is absolutely first-class film-making. Similarly, the acting by Heath Ledger (Ennis) and Michelle Williams (Ennis’s wife, Alma) is excellent. His partner Jake Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of the more volatile Jack is slightly over the top, but not enough to really distract. And, in fairness to Gyllenhaal, the writing for his part is thinner than for the others.
The plot twists intended to move the movie along, however, do a disservice to the rest of the film. Ennis and Jack meet after four years of absence. So the two men begin to kiss madly along a busy avenue of a town. Since Ennis has already informed us that gay men get killed for being even slightly open about their gayness, this is bizarre behavior. It appears to be Ang Lee’s attempt to demonstrate that two men well into their twenties, who know that they are engaged in a dangerous activity, are as brainless as two smitten thirteen-year olds. It insults and demeans the characters. We already know that they are impassioned lovers. During this scene of intense passion, the wife of Ennis, sees the longest kiss since the original “Thomas Crown Affair.” She, besides feeling badly, does nothing. I am guessing here, but if this is Ang Lee’s attempt to show that she is a culturally submissive wife, it does not fit into the rest of the plot, nor the strong character she has already displayed. She eventually refuses relations with Ennis on the reasonable grounds that he will not use contraception and that, until he shows he is serious about supporting his family, she will have no more children. Lee turns this very sensible and reasonably dramatic moment into a pathetic plot device whose sole purpose is to move the Ennis-Jack story along, since the next scene is divorce court. This leaves Ennis free and allows Lee to set up a scene where Jack can feel jilted since Ennis, although divorced, will not join him in setting up a farm where the two can live together—something that they have previously ruled out. This scene, however, allows Jack to state that his father-in-law would pay him to leave his daughter. And this in turn sets up a scene to assert, for the second time, the cliché that strong men are boors. (All the men who hold responsible jobs in this movie are portrayed as boors.) This leads in turn to an incredibly amateurish scene where son-in-law and father-in-law battle over television and child discipline during—you guessed it—Thanksgiving. (They also battle over who cuts the turkey—a scene where Lee simply abandons any pretense to skilled filmmaking, grabs a roller and lathers it on.) I could go on, but this would make this review far too long—just like the movie. Fundamentally, the plot is so thin that all that holds it up are the gimmicks—one, gay men; two, irrational and disconnected plot devices; and three, gaps where those wanting to believe this is great film can read in whatever they wish.
The ending is from desperation. Jack is shown being killed by gay bashers (a much more accurate term than the presently PC “homophobe.” By the way, the odds on a gay male being killed in a gay-bashing incident are between 1 in 50,000,000 and one in 150,000,000.) Some of his ashes go to his parents. The father of Jack (another hard-working and boorish male) refuses the request from a complete stranger to take his son’s ashes and dump them on a far-off mountain. Strangely enough and quite selfishly (this is sarcasm, folks), the father wishes to bury the ashes of his son in the family cemetery. But the father is portrayed as a hostile mean-spirited old farmer. (I could not help but notice that this male had kept a hardscrabble farm going through the twenty years the film covers.) He also tells Ennis that his son had taken up with another man—which, since the two had broken up, adds nothing but—I don’t know what—to the plot. Out next scene is the aforementioned trailer where Ennis’s nineteen-year old daughter drives up to tell him she is getting married. At first, for reasons where are just beyond my understanding, Ennis does not get the name of the fiancé correct, confusing him with an boyfriend the daughter had two years earlier. Then he starts to say he has to go herding rather than going to her wedding. He then relents in what I guess is supposed to be a reassertion of his psychological self. Then after his daughter leaves, he goes over to closet where there is a picture of Brokeback Mountain and begins to talk to his now dead ex-lover. This, I guess, suggests the emotional tie between the two. If so, it is clumsy beyond words, a further hammering of the point made even before the two men were locked in amorous embrace on the staircase with the wife watching.
The writing is not bad, but the plotting is dreadful. The wife of Jack (Lureen Newsome) almost develops into a real character and not just a foil to Jack. Her role could have been truly fleshed out with just a few more lines and touches of color. The wife of Ennis could have been made more believable (it takes her years, a divorce and a remarriage to a soft and gentle man, to reveal to Ennis—at Thanksgiving once again—that she had laid traps for her husband to see if the “fishing trips” he and Jack went on were really “fishing trips.”) Since she had seen their passionate kissing on the open staircase, this makes her the dumbest person on the face of the earth, but since we already know she’s not, this scene proves—what ? I suppose my greatest objection is that all the folks in the movie are stereotypes of what Hollywood actually thinks the people in the middle of the country are like. It is patronizing to the audience and disdainful of the characters. It is not a terrible movie, but it is not anywhere close to being worthy of an Oscar nomination, much less an Oscar. If it had, like “Crash” gone from logical premise to logical result, we might have had a fine movie. As it is, it is about a two-and-a-half star movie.
McVey
Don't care homo.
Yes, it was a short story, but I thought it was plotted out by the writers and Lee in a very ham-handed fashion. This may be personal taste, but after the scene on the staircase mostly open to the street I thought Lee had decided to slip the bounds of earth (and reality) completely. The scene is in the story, but it does not say, staircase open to street.
Hence, I would argue that Lee has a major hand in making it stilted and blocky.
I am quite willing to blame Proux for her stereotyping, too.
McVey
Actually, the quote is "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." ---Hamlet (III, ii, 239)
Is it a compulsion, an obsession, or maybe a deeply repressed attraction driven by their secret private feelings.
Maybe for a few. For the vast majority I think it's just that they enjoy movies, and/or have an interest in the arts, and want to see for themselves what all the fuss is about, when a film gets an enormous amount of press, or is controversial.
Yes, but in a Lifetime Channel movie, you'd be able to call the "man" a sexual predator.
I didn't do it. I think I stole it from a post on one of my song threads.
That goes with out saying. I would also include people like Charles Bronson, Greg Peck, Bert Landcaster, Lee Marvin and Robert Stack.
What about Heath? We love Heath...
/sarc
The truth is most men in America....70% or more? are not going to go see that movie under any circumstance.
It's grossed leass than 9 million according to one article I read.
A movie about shepherds eating pudding? Hmmm, might be interesting for those among us who enjoyed Andy Warhol's 8 hour epic about a man sleeping!
Is it possible to make your comment any more oblique?
It's grossed a little over 29m world-wide. Just opened in Europe though.
$22 or $29 million is still a flop financially.
Actually, the Duke was a very bad actor, but made up for it with screen presence and a deep understanding of what makes a movie entertaining.
It's true, it hasn't really grossed all the much (like 22.4 million), but's doing well in its average per theater gross http://www.rottentomatoes.com/movies/box_office.php?sort=gross_per_venue&rank_id=813. where it has been in the top five of that category for five weeks straight. It seems to be still picking up steam.
Ok, I surrender on this one. Having said that, the sheer volume of publicity for a "B" grade film is not going to hurt Ang Lee at all. I do wonder how much the film cost to make.
McVey
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