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BROKEBACK
MOUNTAIN (Dec 2005)
Director: Ang Lee.
Writers: E. Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana.
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal,
Michelle Williams, Randy Quaid, Anne Hathaway.
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Brokeback
Poffy
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Brokeback
Mountin'.
by
Jon Dunmore © 19 Jan 2006.
The
Days of Our Lives meets The Gays of Our Lives, director Ang Lee's Brokeback
Mountain is an ambitious yet maudlin, slightly above-average American love
story. Slightly.
Only "American" love stories have such easily-defined
plot arcs; only American love stories cull the prettiest protagonists
as their principals; only American Love Stories treat sex as some kind of sacrosanct
privilege. And American audiences, blinded by the formulaic swill they have grown
complacent to - eat it up. Like pudding.
In place of two lily-white,
perfect-complexioned heterosexuals battling for forbidden love, we find two lily-white,
perfect-complexioned homosexuals battling for forbidden love; Ennis Del
Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), paragons of teen lust, embodying
the "gay ideal," rather than any Earth-based representation of homosexuality.
Certainly not a "gay cowboy movie" (as the public glibly pigeonhole
it), Brokeback Mountain is about as representative of homosexual love as
Dude, Where's My Car? is representative of heterosexual love.
With Jack's laughably soap-operatic line, "God, I wish I knew how to quit
you!" it becomes jarringly apparent that for all its aspirations and marketing
ploys, Brokeback is merely a Chick Flick clothed in XY chromosomes - a
Dick Flick!
From a short story by Annie Proulx (and adapted for the screen
by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana - no relation to Roseanne Rosannadanna), we
meet our early-twenty-something characters, Ennis and Jack, in 1963 Wyoming, sheep
wranglers on isolated Brokeback Mountain, who, whilst sharing a tent one cold
night, engage in a violent, impromptu sex grapple. The next morning they both
maintain, "I ain't queer." Sheep season ends and they part ways tersely
- as is their masculine wont - both eventually marrying female wives - as is society's
wont. Rendezvousing for secret trysts over the years - on "fishing trips"
- Ennis' responsibilities to his family and job make it progressively harder for
him to entertain Jack's growing desires to "buy a ranch somewhere and settle
down" with him. As Ennis warns, "This thing gets hold of us at the wrong
time and wrong place and we're dead," relating a horrifying childhood memory
of what was done to a homosexual in his community.
This movie is either
hated because it is "too gay," or lauded as "art" for the
same reason. Like Ennis, the public is unable to forgo its childhood inculcation,
the stigma surrounding gay relationships still niggling like a cancer at the base
of its collective cortex, the movie's high approval rating merely a vicarious
attempt at making hypocritical amends for that deep-rooted fear and misunderstanding
afforded the gay minority.
We may know intellectually that no one is
"gay enough to warrant a beating," but our parents, our peers, our preachers
and politicians beg to differ.
But I need make no amends, having never
offended the gay community, so have nothing to fear, prove or lose. I can truthfully
rate this movie as not powerful enough to outrage. Nor forceful enough to impress.
As "gay cinema," it shines for its mediocrity. Not as "brave"
as Showtime's stellar Queer As Folk (2000 - 2005, starring Gale Harold
and Hal Sparks). Nor has it as much "heart" as Nancy Meckler's Alive
and Kicking (aka Indian Summer, 1996, starring Jason Flemyng), or Geoff
Burton's and Kevin Dowling's The Sum Of Us (1994, starring Russell Crowe).
Nor does it possess as much gritty realism as Stephen Frears' Prick Up Your
Ears (1987, starring Gary Oldman). And how can it be "pioneering"
if the Romans of 2000 years ago ignored absurd delineations of "straight"
and "gay," but rather accepted every gradation of bisexual inbetween-ness?
Still, as an infamous Roman once said, I come not to bury Brokeback;
performances are superb, with neither principal shying away from potentially career-destroying
embraces; the cinematography achingly beautiful, sweeping, sun-lazed, verdant
vistas; the characterization thoughtful, with Jack's extroverted rodeo slant on
life opposed to Ennis' clipped delivery of his lines through clenched teeth, from
a life spent repressing urges. But, like any date movie, it is designed specifically
for those predisposed to weepy romances and Romeo-Juliet tragedies. Further, due
to the current confused social climate where it is more "in" to be Out,
where marketeers propound the idiotic splash-phrase, "Gay is the new Retarded,"
this film undeservedly assumes the mantle of "high art" simply because
it deals with a sexual orientation that scares the bejesus out of Jerry Falwell.
In response to the fallacious reasoning that "all independent films
are Art and therefore worthwhile," South Park's Eric Cartman, in a
fit of foresight for 1998, classified art films as "gay cowboys eating pudding."
Ang Lee seems to concur.
Art is Fellini's 8½, Gilliam's
Brazil, Kurosawa's Rashomon; Brokeback is no more "art"
than Bridges of Madison County or Titanic,
and should more readily be relegated to the mainstream pap romance genre where
it belongs.
Archimedes said, "Give me a lever long enough and a
fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." Ang Lee's lever
is Brokeback, his fulcrum is Hollywood. He may think he is moving the world,
but his lever is unremarkable and his fulcrum is unsound. Being back-slapped by
peers merely for jumping the latest fad, his forthcoming awards will mean nothing
to the contingent his film is ostensibly made for.
Set in an era before
AIDS, support groups or that Jerry Springer episode, "My Husband has a Gay
Cowboy Lover," when Ennis' wife (Michelle Williams) discovers his secret,
she represses it, heartsick for years, with no point of social reference to base
any decisions on. The isolation worked both ways, as the two lovers were just
as bereft of support. Jack laments to Ennis, who is growing apart from him, "You
don't know what it's like to get so little - of something which you need so much!"
Which brings to mind a Zappa song - "He's just a cowboy for a day / Of course,
his evening's not complete / Without some meat in the seat" - with the somewhat
ambiguous title, He's So Gay.
A tragic finale is a given and will
surely wring tears from those inclined to weep at movies of this ilk. But the
tragedy of this film's popularity is that there are no tears shed along the way.
That is, who shed tears for Ennis' wife when her life was destroyed with
the discovery of her husband making out with another guy? Who wept for Jack's
wife (Anne Hathaway) when Jack drove to Mexico and hired a male prostitute? Who
wept for the children of Ennis and Jack who were indirectly affected by the neglect
they encountered due to their fathers' preoccupation with "fishing"?
(Ennis' daughters grow up so fast - and are portrayed by so many different young
actresses - that we never perceive a paternal bond. He is not painted as a "bad"
father, but neither does he seem to possess the tolerance to be a "good"
parent. Let me clarify, for those pc monitors waiting to pounce: he is not callous
because he is gay; he is callous because he is In Love - which is as banal an
excuse as any.) As with all American Love Stories, the audience is geared to only
care about the feelings of the LEADS, the peripheral characters fulfilling their
roles only as "hindrances" to True Love.
A towering emotional
journey - if your inner gender is effeminately attuned (this is very evidently
a story written BY a woman, LIKE a woman, FOR a woman). But this movie is assuredly
not for those sane citizens of Earth who consider that Barney the Dinosaur is,
in fact, "gay enough to warrant a beating."
END
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imdb
Hulk
(Ang Lee)
Jarhead
(Jake Gyllenhaal)
NOTE:
This review was posted at imdb and subsequently "deleted by IMDb based on
an abuse report filed by another user" - which is EXACTLY the type of close-mindedness
I allude to in the piece; the extreme ignorant loyalty to a hype: "...either
hated because it is "too gay," or lauded as "art" for the
same reason."
The individual
that reported the "abuse" (whether gay or otherwise) is obviously an
illiterate, who cannot discern humorouos appraisal and tongue-in-cheek, from "gay-bashing."
Unfortunately for the gay community, it is illiterati like that knucklehead
who are heard and seen as representative of the gay community, making that contingent
seem as narrow-minded as the holier-than-thou contingent who oppress them.
No worse than the bashing I give Catwoman or The Peacemaker, this
average article suddenly assumes a "controversial" skew because of one
humorless jackass.
Thank you, Jackass!
I am important enough to be
hated!...
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BROKEBACK
MOUNTAIN (Dec 2005)
Director: Ang Lee.
Writers:
E. Annie
Proulx, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana.
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal,
Michelle Williams, Randy Quaid, Anne Hathaway.
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