If youve turned on the TV or opened a newspaper in the last couple weeks, you know critics are raving about Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee, staring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllynhaal. The years best picture!-Good Morning America, A big sweeping and rapturous Hollywood love story!-Entertainment Weekly, Four stars!-Rolling Stone, nominated for seven Golden Globe awards including best picture, and on and on and well, after seeing it I can only ask myself one question: Are these people talking about the same movie that I saw? The story is simple: two cowboys out working hard on the cattle drive. It gets lonely, it gets cold, the whiskey is flowing strong, and theres only one tent. The two tough guys just cant resist the temptation of hooking-up with each other and suddenly some pretty awkward and disturbing scenes happen right in front of you. Later, the two find what they are doing to be really strange and state very strongly that they Aint queer. But for some reason they decide to say the heck with it, and just keep going at it, rolling around in the hay every chance they get. The two know very well that they could never tell anyone about the experience, so when they get back to town they go back to their normal living and try to forget about the whole thing. They marry two extremely beautiful women, start families, have normal sex-lives, and live what would appear to be pretty nice lives. But then the stresses of the family life come in, the children are always crying, the cost of living is too tough to keep up with, schedules conflict, the wives talk too much and are too boring, and soon enough the thought of being back on Brokeback Mountain again is undeniable. Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledgers characters get into contact with each other and head back up that mountain for the good-times just the way they were before. They dream of being together away from their families, away from the people who would never approve of what they are doing as two men, but they know it is just not practical. The only thing they can do is sneak away every few months or so, to indulge their undying desires for one another. They tell their wives they are just going on innocent fishing trips, and as you would suspect, they start to get the idea of what is going on between them, but for some reason take a while to even confront them about it. At a certain point in the movie you get the idea of where it is heading and just have to wait for the events to unfold themselves, all the way to the boring and unmoving ending. Heath Ledgers so-called great acting was of a tired cowboy the whole time, unexpressive, and you might say, even kind-of creepy. The film attempts to convince you that the two mens infatuation and sentimentality for each other is more important than being with their own loving families. The wives needs appear to be simple, hoping for affection and support, and the children merely want to spend more time with their fathers, but as viewers of the tragic story, we are supposed to feel sympathetic towards them when all they can think about is how to get back to the mountain, and back to their life of unbridled gay love. |
