and then something happens ~

[lookingland]

just finished watching Brokeback Mountain.

i would first like to qualify my response by saying:

1. i really like ang lee's work in general.

2. i think heath ledger is a good actor.

3. i had no biases going into this movie. the mind was so open my brains were spilling out.

all that said:

1. what a crashing bore.

2. what ennis does to his wife was despicable to the point that i coulda cared less about his travails later down the road. i mean, character-wise it's interesting, but nothing ever redeems him for me. he's worse than jack in that he never takes any action for anything he wants and then he blames jack and whines to him and we're supposed to be feel sorry for him? bleh. boring. dumb.

3. pretty scenery.

other than that, i have no idea what i just watched. i guess i liked the scene where jack tells his father-in-law off and that one almost-good moment where jack's mother gives ennis a paper bag for the shirt, but otherwise i was mostly bored and irritated and felt like i was wasting my time. and was that supposed to be Juarez? because, er, there's a big freaking mountain in Juarez. the landscape looks nothing like that on the border (okay, that's really nit-picky).

i didn't hate this, but i did feel like it was a short story dragged (and dragged) out to make a full-length movie. the interminable opening sequences (actually the whole first half of the movie) was just insanely dull.

eh.



i really like the final image of the hanging shirt.
just wish i actually cared about it, or them, or
what it all meant.
[/end review]

Comments

My thoughts:

[lady-morgaine.livejournal.com]

1. I thought that the movie was sympathetically done - Ang Lee is good at that. It wasn't a "pro-gay" activist type propaganda movie at all, I didn't think, and that made me appreciative. I'm glad Ang Lee still puts art before agenda.

2. I agree: it was boring. You're right; it did feel like a short story stretched to be a movie.

3. I thought the relationship was really strained. On the commentary they talk about how every motion during the love scenes had to be carefully coreographed, and I think that that made those scenes look unnatural to me. Of course I understand why they had to do that; not being gay myself, I don't think I'd know how to perform in a gay love scene.

4. I felt SO bad for Ennis' wife and their children. That could have been partly due to Michelle Williams' rather excellent acting. (I also thought Anne Hathaway was quite good.) Ennis was irritating. He needed a good slap upside the head.

5. My best friend from home decided she was going to like the movie before she ever saw it because it was about gay cowboys. I think most people are similar. They're too afraid to dislike it; they don't want to seem "closed minded" or whatever. And it doesn't help when, if you dislike the film, you get a reaction like the one Annie Proulx gave the Academy when "Brokeback" lost the Oscar.

Re: My thoughts:

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i thought the affair felt strained and unnatural too for some reason ~ especially that first motel scene ~ they just look weird through the whole scene (like two actors who are pretending to be gay maybe). i dunno. maybe that was why.

i don't think the story for the movie was Oscar-caliber at all. it's over-long and very flat (very little changes from start to finish). it's beautifully shot, but the material just isn't all that terribly interesting or exciting.

it's too bad about the whole "you just must hate gay people" thing. Makes you wonder who the narrow-minded people really are.

: o p

Re: My thoughts:

[littlewings04.livejournal.com]

I disagree on boring and the pre-concieved notions. I went into the film being a fan of Proulx and with the hope of seeing a well-made film, as Ang Lee does incredible work. I didn't go wanting to love gay cowboys. I didn't go wanting to be "open-minded". I happened to be blown out of the water by the film. It was slow-paced and it built up to this emotional ending that has made me cry every time I've seen Brokeback, and I've lost count of how many times that is now. The pacing is what allows the cinematography to shine, and I think it also goes towards demonstrating the passage of time, how infrequent and brief Jack and Ennis' meetings were, could ever be, how those small sparks set into motion huge portions of their lives, for good or ill. Ennis struggled, for sure. And I don't think he's without blame. But I also don't think that for him, there was any way to embrace what he was or deny it, either. I think that's also the point of the film--for Ennis, there was no escape, and because of the atmosphere in which he lived, the hyper-macho culture of the cowboy, the ranch hand, a world where deviance is not well tolerated, he suffered and made others suffer with him because he could not fully be what and who he was.

It is entirely possible and, I think, entirely probable to love Brokeback without doing so because of wanting to be hip and open-minded. I think people went to see it to be open-minded. Their opinions directly after have more to do with what the film made them feel and think about than wanting to be trendy and accepting, in my experience. Your mileage may vary and may have everything to do with your locale--being in DC and being involved in the GLBT community here makes a large difference for me, I think.

Re: My thoughts:

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i agree it's perfectly possible to like the movie without any agendas whatsoever. no one i know in person really thought much of the film, but i know some of my online friends seemed to enjoy it and think it was rewarding.

Re: My thoughts:

[lady-morgaine.livejournal.com]

Didn't mean to offend; was just speaking out of my experience. The "boring" part is all a matter of opinion, and the "pre-conceived notions" part is just my experience. Honestly, no one goes in to any film (or any human experience for that matter) without pre-conceived notions of some sort, a sort of "lens" through which we see things. And I guess my lens was that I'm not really interested in gay romances to begin with, so that's what probably made it more boring for me. As you said, your involvement in the GLBT community makes a difference for you, as it's something you're interested in and familiar with.

Ang Lee does do incredible work. I've loved everything else I've seen him do. The film was good in terms of acting, cinematography, and sympathy. I read the short story before I saw the film and wasn't too impressed, but I havent' read anything else by Proulx and was really upset with her reaction to the Oscars. And I was very confused by the fact that Proulx and others (like Gyllenhaal on the commentary) tried to say that the characters weren't "really gay" but just fell in love with each other during a summer of intimacy, but then the GLBT community picked it up as a movie about gay identity and struggles to "be who they really are", etc. I couldn't figure out what point they were trying to make. Are they really gay or are they not?

And I guess I had less sympathy for Ennis than for Jack because Ennis was just so frustrating. His apathy towards his daughters was awful! He showed very little human emotion towards anyone. (Okay, I'm probably going in too deep here but if he were a real person) I wouldn't be surprised if he had some other psychological issues, given his childhood and his detachment from his wife and children and all that. He just frustrated me, is all.

But anyway, I was probably generalizing a bit too freely from what I felt my friend was doing. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons to love this movie for its own merits, without wanting to be trendy and accepting. I do agree that people went to see it to be open-minded; I saw it because I wanted to be open-minded, and I actually wanted to like it because I usually trust my friend's opinion on films and we usually agree about films. {shrug}

Re: My thoughts:

[lady-morgaine.livejournal.com]

By the way, I'm sorry if this is a little stalker-ish, but I just looked at your interests and I just had to say that you have SO MUCH in common with Leah (my best friend from home)! We became friends after we both discovered that we loved vampire stories and all things related to vampires; she's in love with manga and Harry Potter and Phantom of the Opera too (I share the latter interest with her but not so much the former two, despite many years of attempted conversion on her part). So anyway, I guess it makes sense that you would agree about the film! :)

Re: My thoughts:

[littlewings04.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Not stalkerish, just funny. Isn't weird how people who are wholly unrelated have many of the same interests and opinions? So odd. Serendipity at work. *grins*

Re: My thoughts:

[littlewings04.livejournal.com]

No offense! Merely pointing out that there are so many different ways of coming to this film that it's hard to say that the people who loved it did for reason x or y. It's a story that appeals on many different levels and in many different ways. (The fact that I've also spent a substantial amount of my life around ranch hands and working in the saddle also made the work ring true for me in a way I'm sure it doesn't for more urban folks.)

America in general is struggling with this idea of people being either fish or foul or good red meat. You're either gay or you're straight in the US right now. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, etc. The way Ennis was presented, both in the short story and in the film is as a man who had a watershed moment with another man on that mountain. Whether or not he's a Kinsey 6 or a Kinsey 0 isn't the point--and it shouldn't be the point for anyone. Ennis fell in love with another man. He was sexually attracted to another man. And whether or not it happened again in his lifetime isn't really as important as people want to make it into being. Sexual identity is a spectrum of experiences, desires and needs, not a binary "if ever involved with same gender, homo, if ever involved with opposite, hetero". Ennis, if anything, would probably be bisexual. But there's no way of knowing because the world he lived in and his childhood experiences limited his sexual expression to hetero-by-default. The fact that he had that relationship with Jack at all is what makes the film about identity. For one summer, he threw off his whole life's experience to take the chance and love. He suffered because he couldn't embrace that love, because he lacked the courage to step outside societal expectations, he was never fully who he had the potential to be on that mountain. Brokeback itself functions as a mythical sort of place, it represents freedom from expectations, from society and civilization. It is the only place where Ennis is not afraid. And that is why they spend their whole lives trying to get back there and can never succeed. In a very mythological sense, when one leaves fairyland, when one walks out of paradise, one cannot ever look back and regain what was lost. The short story is clearer on that point, I think. It's part of the tradition of the West where the wilderness is a sort of innocent Garden of Eden but yet frought with peril. That does come from knowing Proulx's work, I think.

So, in short, it's not about whether Ennis and Jack are "really gay". There is no "really gay". There are people who sleep with the same gender their whole lives. There are some who sleep with the other gender their whole lives. There are some people who sleep with both. And there are still yet some who sleep with the opposite gender their whole lives, save for one or two forays into the same. And all of those are very real, very meaningful and important expressions of sexuality. Albert Kinsey's research is ignored about this. We exist on a scale, not a binary. In Brokeback, these two men have an experience that changes who they are and shapes their whole lives. If that is not a part of creating identity, then I don't know what is.

Re: My thoughts:

[lady-morgaine.livejournal.com]

Brokeback itself functions as a mythical sort of place, it represents freedom from expectations, from society and civilization. It is the only place where Ennis is not afraid. And that is why they spend their whole lives trying to get back there and can never succeed.

Good point. One of my LJ friends pointed out the role nostalgia plays in the film, and I think he was making a similar point.

Your thoughts on the whole gay vs not gay issue help clarify the worldview of the people who made the film, so I thank you for that. I do understand that a one-time experience with a person of the same gender doesn't necessarily mean you're gay! But I'm not really up-to-date on the state of research on sexuality, and the things I do hear sound so confused. So knowing what particular perspective this film is coming from is helpful.

Re: My thoughts:

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i think the point about nostalgia is an interesting one ~ and may be part of why i don't find myself connecting to this film at all (because the nostalgia is so central to their relationship).

i'm not a nostalgic person. nostalgia baffles me. i understand being fond of something past, but acting in the present on that fondness always strikes me as potentially foolish and irresponsible.

if i judge the characters at all, it's for that:creating their identity out of thinking they could get back something that was ephemeral and unreal (i.e. fantasy). it only shaped their lives because they let it. for them to cry in their beer after the fact seems a weak choice dramaturgically. it may be the "human" choice, but for me personally it doesn't make for a good story (and that's my whole objection to the film ~ i think the story is pretty weak)

certainly a different way to examine it.

[gwyn-hwyfar.livejournal.com]

I will eventually see it if for no other reason than to look at Heath Ledger for 2 hours even if he is being a big jerk :D

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

hahahahaha ~

~ his performance here is very good. but yeah, as a character i thought he was weak willed and totally irresponsible. not really someone i wanted to spend 2 hours and 15 minutes with since he never changed from start to finish.

: o p

[geckobird.livejournal.com]

For me, it was Jack's story and the wives that really brought out the tears for me. Ennis was very confusing, and I agree with that girl who tried to pick him up after he left his wife ~ He is a frustrating mystery. Obviously he was struggling with who he was in a place that was hostile to his true self. Yet, he didn't seem to change. It wasn't until Jack was dead, and he was holding Jack's shirt, that he started to show some empathy, which was toward his daughter. I mean, really, I was way shocked to see him smile at her, and actually look a little proud of her. He didn't really show any other emotion in the rest of the film.

It was Jack that really made the movie, I think. He was a tortured soul, also struggling with who he was, and his feelings for Ennis. He kept trying to push Ennis into action, but Ennis just dragged his feet. In a way, Ennis's lack of action increased Jack's own pain, and I felt far more sympathy toward Jack than I ever will toward Ennis. The two wives especially had some amazing scenes. Ennis's wife in particular had a spectacular performance ~ and the scenery itself was beautiful. I really don't know if I liked it or not ~ I cried at the end of course, since I always am quite into movies no matter how good or bad. (The only one I couldn't get into was Legend, that ancient movie about some sort of fairy tale...)

Well, that was kinda a long ramble...

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

that's inneresting. i actually had no empathy for jack whatsoever. i felt like he took responsibility for his choices at least to some degree moreso than ennis and so i sorta felt he did things the way he wanted to and so what's to feel sorry for?

i agree with you that heath ledger's performance was pretty amazing. even if i didn't like the character i thought he did well with it.

: D

[geckobird.livejournal.com]

Aw, that's an interpretation I didn't consider. He did seem to take more responsibility than Ennis did. I think what stirred sympathy for the character is when he comes all the way from Texas to visit Ennis, and Ennis just drags his feet and doesn't say much of anything when Jack yells at him, crying. When Jack drives back in tears, I felt bad for him, for he can't seem to just let go and accept the fact that he and Ennis can't be together. He just couldn't see to move on, and in that scene, it was obvious that he really wanted to move on, but just didn't seem to know how.

Haha, Maybe I saw too much into that collection of scenes.

And Yes! Heath Ledger was absolutely amazing, even if his character was a tad frustrating. ^_^