Posted on 12/14/2005 11:22:00 PM PST by Antioch
"Brokeback Mountain" the much publicized "gay cowboy love story" adapted from a New Yorker magazine piece by Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx, arrives at last, and the film itself -- a serious contemplation of loneliness and connection -- belies the glib description.
While it is the story of an intimate relationship, more to the point it's the relationship of two emotionally scarred souls. Ranch hands Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) share a sheepherding assignment on a mountain in Signal, Wyo., in 1963. Ennis is a man of few words; Jack is somewhat more open.
Their friendship gradually grows despite Ennis' taciturn manner. At first, it's only Jack who sleeps in the camp near the sheep (with Ennis ensconced down the mountain), but come to realize it is more practicable to guard the sheep in tandem. Ennis resolutely insists he'll sleep outdoors, but the cold drives him into Jack's tent, where the two awkwardly, then roughly, have sex. Incidentally, that scene -- short and with the men mostly clothed -- is the only onscreen gay sexual encounter in the film.
In the morning, both are too embarrassed to talk about what has transpired, but a bond has formed, and we are led to understand that the relationship has deepened. Later, some outdoor wrestling is observed by their boss, the unsympathetic rancher Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid), who watches them with a knowing eye. At the end of the season, they come down from the mountain, and dismissing what happened on the mountain as a "one-shot deal," go their separate ways. Ennis is engaged to Alma (Michelle Williams, Ledger's real-life girlfriend). But we see him crumple in despair as soon as he's alone. The first human connection he's had is coming to an end.
Jack, for his part, makes a tentative attempt to pick up an Ennis-like cowboy in a bar, but eventually meets former prom queen Lureen (Anne Hathaway). Both men marry and have children. Time goes by, and Jack sends a postcard to Ennis telling him he's coming to town. The air is rife with anticipation as Ennis waits for the reunion. When Jack finally drives up, the unexpressive Ennis can barely contain his excitement, and rushes out to meet him.
They embrace passionately, not realizing that Alma is sadly viewing the interaction from behind the screen door. She says nothing, but understands all. On the trip, Jack proposes that they chuck their families and buy a ranch, but Ennis -- who as a child witnessed the aftermath of a hate-crime murder of two rancher neighbors who had lived together -- can't bring himself to do it.
Thereafter, Ennis and Jack initiate meeting several times a year for "fishing" trips where they can be alone together. Lureen, for her part, senses the importance of these trips to her husband, but remains engrossed in her own business. As the Catholic Church makes a distinction between homosexual orientation and activity, Ennis and Jack's continuing physical relationship is morally problematic.
The adulterous nature of their affair is another hot-button issue. But the pain Jack and Ennis cause their families is not whitewashed. (The women are played with tremendous sympathy, not as shrill harridans.) It's the emotional honesty of the story overall, and the portrayal of an unresolved relationship -- which, by the way, ends in tragedy -- that seems paramount.
Director Ang Lee tells the story with a sure sense of time and place, and presents the narrative in a way that is more palatable than would have been thought possible. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana's screenplay uses virtually every scrap of information in Proulx's story, which won a National Magazine Award, and expands it while remaining utterly true to the source.
The performances are superb. Australian Ledger may be the one to beat at Oscar time, as his repressed manly stoicism masking great vulnerability is heartbreaking, and his Western accent sounds wonderfully authentic. Gyllenhaal is no less accomplished as the more demonstrative of the pair, while Williams and Hathaway (the latter, a far cry from "The Princess Diaries," giving her most mature work to date) are very fine.
Looked at from the point of view of the need for love which everyone feels but few people can articulate, the plight of these guys is easy to understand while their way of dealing with it is likely to surprise and shock an audience.
Except for the initial sex scene, and brief bedroom encounters between the men and their (bare breasted) wives, there's no sexually related nudity. Some outdoor shots of the men washing themselves and skinny-dipping are side-view, long-shot or out-of-focus images. While the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed, the universal themes of love and loss ring true.
According to the accounting, which I know something about, this is looking to do just fine money-wise. No one can predict for sure, but this is being marketed craftily, conservative outrage included in the mix.
BBM has a budget of under $20 million. With the buzz it's getting and those admittedly preliminary per screen averages, when you add in the DVD and TV sales, this thing is probably already in profit. Not very nip and tuck when it's at or near profit before it's even opened in more than 5 theaters.
Thousands of sexually offended, furious bikers...
Can't say I'd ever want to see that...
Personally, I kinda liked the old "X" rating for queeer-movies.
Ya think?!
The point here is the cynically predictable juvenile nature of the project. "Gay cowboys, that'll get all those middle-class prudes!" First of all, we all knew it would be a critical success before it hit the screen. Second, we all knew it would be an Oscar contender (and Golden Globe winner, bank on it) before the voters even saw it. Third, it was predicted by none other than Eric Cartman, and I am really surprised that the main press doesn't mention it.
It's the same old indy film stuff, just this time somebody's heard of the director and actors.
Now the absurdity of a lonely sheep herder turning to his male partner for sexual companionship aside (I mean, we're talking SHEEP here!) its only purpose is to be provocative.
Fine, but let's not pretend it's Shakespeare.
BTW, how am I wrong about the thing not making money until the Oscars? It hasn't cracked a mil in gross receipts (gross). DVD and TV won't come into the picture until at least the spring.
Let's see...this is a film about betrayal, deceit, lust and peverse sexuality, to mention just the overview character points, and it's being endorsed?
I can barely believe what I'm reading: the thieves are running the bank, the fox has captured the henhouse, the homosexuals have overrun this aspect to "church" opinion.
Yes, this is a film about male homosexuality and lust in full bloom, and over and over again. But, take a look at the story itself and how these two main characters continue to deceive one another, their respective families and even abandon and abuse other people (also themselves).
The ONLY thing being lauded and commended about this film is that it's a pornographic film being sold and marketed in family neighborhood theatres. THAT's what the homoseuxual and otherwise, liberal groups is lauding: that they're making a "breakthrough" attempt to bring these terrible character faults into popular acceptabilty.
They're parading very bad character traits, not to mention behaviors, as "good" and going for sympathy for same. In that, they're commending themselves, and it's a moral and ethical loss for all of us.
LOL You aren't denying anything -in fact, you are acclaiming and promoting the sick film on this very thread.
Conclusion of Review: And his Versace cowboy boots were to die for.
Any bets as to how hard it will be to find a pirated Brokeback Mountain torrent?
Shouldn't be all that difficult to figure out. All you closet types who listened to idiots who told you to "marry a nice girl, and this will go away" will be feverishly downloading anything you can about this.
Do you ever notice how those folks who say "marry some nice girl and settle down, and this will go away" to gay guys never volunteer their own daughters for that little experiment. (Wise, but morally bankrupt, people.)
Can ANYONE defend the USCCB in this case?
The reviewer is absolutely drooling over the thought of drooling over the actors *****
The Virgin Mary intimated our Age to Lucy in Fatima in 1917:
"Look, my child, don't be surprised if, at a certain moment, a certain diabolical disorientation affects the best of minds, a disequilibrium, so that they no longer judge according to the voice of my Son and of Peter."
Personally, I doubt you'll find a pirate copy of this film on the internet. All homosexual issues aside, this film looks dull, tedious, and just plain stupid.
I grew up watching cowboys played by John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Brigadier General Jimmy Stewart. I want my cowboys to track down rustlers, fend off apaches, bust broncos, protect villages from marauding banditos, and always out draw the bad guy. I don't want to see cowboys (or shepherds billed as cowboys) sharing their feelings and tender moments. Cowboys shouldn't have feelings. They should have steely eyes and determined jaw-lines.
Haha, you got zotted.
The very phrase that rationalizes all forms of pornography.
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