damn good review

[kaigou]

Daniel Mendelsohn gets it.

The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it. If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they're not really homosexual—that they're more like the heart of America than like "gay people"—you're pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed.

link via digsby's Hullabaloo.

Comments

[mroctober.livejournal.com]

I went to see The Producers today and while waiting for the movie to begin I overheard some older women (seniors) talking. I figured out they were discussing BM and one mentioned how she had missed a pivotal scene (since I have not seen the flick I do not know which one) because she had to reach for a tissue and wipe her tears away. She mentioned how she should go back just to see that scene. I thought that really nice.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I went to see it here in Texas, and what I thought most amazing was that my friend & I were among the youngest in the crowd. It was a matinee performance, granted, but the majority of the audience were men and women (maybe one man to every three women), in groups, perhaps early forties to their sixties. And yes, there were a number of scenes where I had to blink furiously to be able to keep seeing the screen (which is saying something, for me); I heard a lot of sniffling around me from pretty much a third into the movie to the end.

Don't go see it unless you've got tissues, a good friend with you, and are emotionally up for some pretty intense stuff. Ang Lee pulls no punches, but that's one reason I admire him.

[musickal.livejournal.com]

Ang Lee pulls no punches, but that's one reason I admire him.

Same here. This movie was fantastic!

[xian-pu.livejournal.com]

i didn't care for the movie, acutally.

let me rephrase that.

i didn't care for the second half of the movie. i thought it was slow and not very interesting.

the first half was wonderful, i loved the cinematography, and some of the best scenes had no words.

but i really didn't like the movie overall. *shrugs*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I thought it was an exceedingly difficult movie, and not just because it was dealing with some intense issues. It really required that I work, as a viewer, and there were points -- even while watching -- that I did feel exhausted by it. Ang Lee's comedic stuff (which I so love) doesn't usually make me put out this much effort to track his details and the tiny little things just to get an idea of the big picture. Hell, I completely missed that Jack's mother smuggled Jack's ashes to Ennis. I wondered why there was a close-up shot, but by that point I was like: ugh, something else Lee is trying to tell me and I have no idea, still processing...

So no, I'm not surprised when anyone says they didn't like the movie for one reason or another. i don't think it was necessarily the most accessible movie, but in some ways, that's also what I like most about it. Oddly.

[siriusjazz.livejournal.com]

Hey, your post is pretty timely, seeing as I just saw the movie a second time the other night. ;) Warning, I'm gonna ramble...

While I agree with the article on the whole, there is one thing that I don't particularly agree with. All throughout the article, Mendelsohn refers to the movie and Jack and Ennis as distinctly "gay." While I think it's pretty obvious that Jack was a gay man, I always got the impression that Ennis wasn't "gay" per se (in the terms that he was generally attracted to other men), he just fell in love with a man. Jack, when he couldn't be with Ennis, sought out the company of other men. Ennis, though, never did - the only homosexual relationship he had was with Jack. I suppose you could reason his upbringing and fear made him deny whatever urges he had unless he was with Jack. But something makes me think that Jack was the only one meant for him - other men and women wouldn't do. Perhaps this is because he was in love. But...it gets me thinking...men are men. And while Jack's sexual relationship with his wife deteriorated, Ennis still had sex with his wife, and he probably did with his post-divorce girlfriend. But you could reason again that the fear and loathing within him pushed those urges aside. I don't know... Yes, Ennis was gay in that he had a relationship with another man. But I never got the impression that he was strictly gay, I guess you could say. For instance, at the end, I got the feeling that Ennis would probably never have another relationship with a man, and probably not with a woman, either.

I mean, I can definitely see the reasoning behind Ennis's being determinedly gay. Again, what with his upbringing and fear of society's expectations, he could have been gay from the beginning and simply denied it until Jack brought those feelings out. But...while watching the movie...I never got the feeling it was "pushing an agenda." It could be the subtlety and gracefulness of Ang Lee's work. The movie definitely carried a message about society and homosexuality, but I never felt like it was preachy or thrust in my face. I suppose I wouldn't have loved the movie as much if it did. But rather than doing that, Lee let the story and movie speak for themselves. I think...classifying it as a "gay love story," as Mendelsohn refers to it, almost pigeonholes it. That's why I believe that while at the core the story is an epic and tragic homosexual romance, it is universal in that it is a story about the road not taken and living with the consequences of living in fear. It's about shortchanging yourself.

Granted, there wouldn't be a story had Jack and Ennis not been gay. But I guess what I'm really arguing is Ennis's true sexuality - whether he was gay, bisexual, or straight-until-he-met-Jack.

Heh, I probably don't make much sense, do I? Oh, but reading from your other comment, I guess I must've missed Jack's mom slipping Ennis the ashes, too! But, where did she find the time to do that, and what would she say to her husband? I don't know, I guess I'll have to see it yet again. But there's so much about the movie that I love. It's so beautiful, I cry every time, and the juxtapositions and parallels all throughout are just so touching.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I don't think it reduces the story in the least if Ennis was either a) bisexual, or b) so damn good at repressing that he couldn't not be with women because, hey, that's what he's supposed to do. It fits their respective personalities: Jack is the dreamer, but he's also the active one. If he can't get it here, he will there, and he'll keep going until he finds it. Ennis is the one who won't go back, won't go forward, and it's only in the light of Jack, who pushes him, that he makes any movements at all. I think it said something quite loud & clear that the one time we see Ennis with his wife, he flips her over on her stomach. That said something to me, at least.

Although I often dislike the notion that one must be either hetero or homo in one's sexuality, and bisexuality is just dismissed out of hand as indecisiveness, the fact that Lee's not pushing an agenda makes that whole issue sort of fall by the wayside. Ennis, and Jack, are able to be fully complex with a handful of contradictory elements because that's how people really are. Maybe what makes this more of a "this is the American midwest" rather than the usual "oh, look, a NY decorator" is because the latter is so often not just a stereotype, but one without any attendent complexities. We need cardboard for good comedy; depth tends to ruin the joke -- and Lee's movie, and his treatment, is meant to be anything but a joke.

Which reminds me of the fact that when I saw it with Mikkeneko, there was one person in the theater who kept laughing (if somewhat curtly) at all the wrong parts. It was highly annoying, but at the same time, I sort of felt bad for someone so uncomfortable that laughter was the only possible response. After all, we often laugh at something that makes us so discomforted the only other reaction could be frustrated or miserable tears, but still, to hear the entire theater inhale on a single breath when Jack and Ennis meet again after four years -- and then this one person laugh in the back... it annoyed me. Sigh.