My inevitable review of Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain"

    First of all, within the capacity of what I think the film is (simple in it's seductive sweetness, and way-multifaceted in it's bleakness) I must say I found it very enjoyable (I loved watching it!), but the experience of viewing the picture was narrow in many ways.
    Fussed-over and coiffed even in its gritty moments, the film is oddly fairy tale-like throughout... despite its almost sickeningly blighted ending. On the film's surface it is picturesque, poetic, dreamy, slow and subtle. Skilled director Ang Lee casts the rugged wilderness of Wyoming as a gorgeous, ever-turning Marlboro ad kaleidoscope - his take on the beauty of nature would have made Andy Warhol blush. Fitting, because at it's sad, sweet heart, the story being celebrated in the media as "new" and "shocking" - is only so within it's own slim mainstream pop culture bandwidth. The story's two main characters, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) play cowboys who take a job herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming during 1963. The two fall into a gay relationship on the isolated mountain, and despite one living in Wyoming and one living in Texas, maintain the relationship for over two decades, using the mountain for an ongoing several-a-year rendezvous spot where they can see each other in blissful secret, away from the people and events that have developed in their own lives over that time.
    Sound romantic? Heavenly so. Which is why Ennis and Jack almost seem like angels, or ghosts. The two main protagonists, despite one fantastic performance and one debatable one, seem like fauxhemian robots in a lot of ways.
    It makes sense seeing as how the entire logic and energy of the film is (and forever will be) enslaved by the grandly bland-ing tradition of Hollywood films that are disciplined in anticipation for an Oscar and Golden Globe vortex parade. Remember how BOYS DON'T CRY ('99) swept the Oscars? Remember the film? No, really... can you remember it? I find this realization regrettable about BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, because I genuinely enjoyed the picture, and was sincerely rooting for it (for many reasons) when I was first steamrolled by it's media hype (over two years ago!) - I just wish the end product had turned out as less of a pose...

     Will BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN forever be branded by the garish spotlight already overcrowded by skull-crushingly dumb product like  WILL AND GRACE, QUEER AS FOLK, or QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY? Not exactly. Ang Lee's film is in the same solar system as those media-washed nightmares - just on a further planet (FYI: Gus Van Sant's MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO ['91] is not even in that same universe... and John Schlesinger's MIDNIGHT COWBOY ['69] is in another dimension altogether).
    Speaking of space, you know that weird logic in films where two characters will be having a conversation as they walk through a setting, and one will ask another one about something, and the other character will be answering the question posed, but the two characters have obviously walked a great distance, like all the way from the exit of a cafe to the entrance of a park... and it seems like they held a pause in their conversation just so they could be in another interesting setting for the director to cut to? Well, that happens a lot in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - except instead of settings, whole decades seem to pass before Ennis answers Jack's questions about how best to deal with their relationship. While watching the film, one gets the idea that the two men never say anything to each other, or discuss anything at all amongst themselves, all those years the camera was not on them. Does it really take twenty-five years for them to dramatically confront one another about having to always escape to the mountain, and the status of their secret relationship (in a powerful scene near the film's end)? This of course keeps things simple, but ends up giving a lot of the film a high-school-play feel.
    The screenplay was adapted from a short story by Annie Proulx that originally appeared in The New Yorker magazine, and within that context it was probably blissful. But on the grand, all-seeing-eye scale of a full-length motion picture, which simultaneously enlarges and flattens fiction... Proulx's story suffers from improbability that you wonder about later. Is it cynical to think that two people will still feel so strongly for each other after twenty-five year's long time... with so much happening in their own lives, and in having to see each other in such a hassling arrangement over and over and over, month after month, year after year? Also, Ennis and Jack meet in the 1960s and hold a hidden gay relationship all the way up to the 1980s, keeping hush hush the whole time. But were they even aware of the changing culture around them at all? It's like the two characters were inside a time machine that was whizzing them throughout the decades that frame the film's timeline, so the outside world (and 1/4 of a century) was a blur that affected them in no way. An excellent adventure? Probably not, but then again the culture at large within the reality of the film doesn't affect Ennis and Jack because Lee chooses to never show it (to them). And of course I'm getting carried away; whatever structure a director creates in order to diorama a story they want to tell is fine, if it works... and for the story he wanted to get across here - it certainly functions. And changes in the culture outside of their "secret" are touched upon in a few subtle ways: in the beginning of the film, passage to Brokeback Mountain is totally remote and removed from society and prying eyes, accessible only by a prickly journey with a sure-footed mule. But by film's end, Ennis and Jack are able to drive their trucks literally right up to their usual camping spot, via an obviously well-traveled dirt road.
    Heath Ledger's portrayal of Ennis Del Mar is that of a leathery, simple farm-bot with a squinty drawl and Sasquatch gait - which he enacts beautifully. Reminding me (to death) of the exact types of men I grew up around during my adolescence in Texas (yes I know this is Wyoming), you must trust me when I tell you he gets every nuance spot-on. The scene of Ledger automatically putting his thumbs in his jean pockets at an empty country western bar and starting a typical plywood-style dance-sway when a girl drags him onto the floor had me howling with nostalgic laughter (especially when contrasted against the twirling, laughing, sex-ritual bounce of his female partner). This casual cardboard cut-out dance style is reserved only for the most self-conscious he-men in country dance bars - and is exactly how Ledger's character would have unconsciously handled the situation. Ledger has countless great scenes, but they were so grizzly real to me while watching the film that it's almost painful to write about them now.
    Unfortunately, Ledger's great performance casts a shadow over Jake Gyllenhaal's earnest but twee inhabitation of a similar role, a shadow from which Gyllenhaal can occasionally shine out of using his anime-like large cartoon eyes. I can't help but be reminded of the way Seth Green's excellent interpretation of extro-freak James St. James commanded the camera from a mis-cast lead Macaulay Culkin in the disappointing PARTY MONSTER ('03), or the way Charlize Theron's hypnotically sick performance of Aileen Wuornos obliterates Christina Ricci's blither-blather sidekick role in the half-great MONSTER ('03). Also of note: Ledger's mannerisms in the film and their obvious similarity to our sitting president is unquestionable. I doubt the makers of the film meant it to turn out that way from the start, although along the way I doubt anyone involved (even Ledger?) thought to tone the similarities down.
    Speaking of shadowy presidents, I have to say found the obvious politicization of hot topics in the story (which were perhaps inserted into it) to be off-putting and forced, even tired; heterosexual marriages are dysfunctional! Traditional family get-togethers are a nightmare! Ohhhh... rise and shine Christian Family Values America!
    The death of Jack is being called a shameless analogy to Matthew Shepard's martyrdom. Shepard was also from Wyoming. I weirdly didn't pick this up when I saw the film, perhaps because I've always eye-rollingly ignored the Shepard legacy out of semi-disgust. Any simple research into the Shepard case reveals complexities in the personas and situations of the victim and his perpetrators that contradict what political activists (on both sides) have tried to turn the whole thing into. Perhaps why I didn't love BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN in a nutshell?
    The over-budgeted fabrication of most of the greeting-card/home-catalog-ish settings (particularly in the second half of the film) is often depressing, especially when your eye is allowed to wander during many of the long takes. One wonders if it's just an attempt to not confuse or disturb an audience that the creators thought didn't want to face ugly images, or if it's just due to lazy, unimaginative design teams. Gyllenhaal sports a way-obvious fake mustache towards the end of the film (let's hope the added pot belly is also a prosthetic). In one scene during a Thanksgiving dinner at Jack's "real" family's house (set in the 1970s), the characters arranged carefully around the table are dressed in so many blatantly obvious costume and hair choices, and the showroom style dining area has so many barefaced 70s-nostalgia props and furniture pieces placed perfectly around the room, with nary a molecule out of place (even the turkey looks plastic!), that the whole scenario begins to resemble a scene from Todd Haynes' lost and excellent SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY ('87).
    Although having condescendingly "scrooged" my way through most of the above points, I must confess optimistically that director Lee obviously wasn't afraid to show in his film other complexities within troublesome life situations; particularly the devastation that secret affairs can have on established families (and Lee doesn't waste time on glass menagerie clichés). The claustrophobia and pain imposed on Alma Beers Del Mar's (Michelle Williams) world is shown no-holds-barred on screen when she first learns the un-faceable realities of her husband's clandestine affair. And since Williams' excellent performance only makes you care about what happens to her... it's heart-wrenching to see her have to live with the undisclosed arrangement for many more years (when the two were finally shown getting a divorce, I practically fell out of my seat cheering for her - '...that's right! Divorce that lying gay creep!')  Perhaps the down-to-earth Alma should have taken a hint from Jack's wife Lureen Newsome Twist (Anne Hathaway), who deals with her husband's secret gay life the only way a Texas power-woman can; practicing reinforced obliviousness while dripping in diamonds. In a heartbreaking scene where Lureen is telling Ennis an obviously made-up story of how her husband died, she's shown reciting the tall tale over the phone in a bored monotone, perched in a gorgeous all-white living room, dripping in silver, turquoise and platinum mile-high hair... any look of emotion on her face obscured by mountains of Mary Kay.
    "Nature vs. nurture" debate thrill-seakers will be either love or loathe the events depicted leading up to Ennis and Jack's initial domino coital spark. Rather than an awakening of something deep inside both of them, Lee plays out their first deflowering as the result of the two men being isolated and bored for a great length of time, with no women around.
    Other moral symbols are luridly touched upon in obvious manners, yet still work. After Ennis and Jack's first late-night drunken tryst, Ennis symbolically pays for his sins by discovering the carcass of a gruesomely eviscerated lamb, slaughtered by wolves the night before when it should have been kept safe under his paid night watch. Whether you're rebelling against the laws of structural society, nature, or man... or just following your heart... something has to be sacrificed as a result.
    Despite it all, did I take anything away from the film besides the melancholy and pensive mood it left me in as I walked out of the theater? I learned a great new phrase, slurred-with-daggers by Ennis and Jack's first boss Joe Aguirre (a deliciously beady eyed Randy Quaid), who leeringly accuses them of "..stemming the rose," although strangely I originally had an audial hallucination and heard it as "thorning the lily" (even better!)  I've never heard this real term, or the imaginary one... and plan on using both repeatedly in the bedroom with my boyfriend Jim! See? BAREBACK MOUNTAIN has strengthened my relationship with my longtime companion!
    Speaking of, I found the initial intimate sexual scenes, hyped and debated widely in the press as the film was being made, to be incredibly awkward and really not done very well at all. In their first encounter in the tent, with all the spastic pushing, slap-punching, violent face-butting and pants-ripping, Ledger and Gyllenhaal display the intimacy of a pair of drunken paraplegics fighting over the last belt buckle at a Western Wear closing sale. With the way these scenes have been pointlessly debated in salivating gay blogs for their poignancy or daring (nope!), I can't imagine the horrors these images might have on impressionable gay adolescents anticipating their first dates. But hey, what's a virgin gay sex experience without Keystone Kops-style faux-rape anyway?
    Beyond that nit-picking, and in an a much larger sense; the film does have a nice balance. Jack's initial enthusiasm in looking forward to the life that the two could possibly have if only Ennis would let go of his fear in the film's first half, is mirrored at the end with Ennis looking regretfully back on the life the two could have had if only he had done so.
    When Ennis goes to Jack's childhood home of his own accord to meet his parents after his death, he finds a spooky, confused old rural couple in a depressingly run-down farm in the middle of nowhere, obviously at odds with what really happened to their son. Even more at unease with who Ennis appears to be, Jack's stubborn, skeleton-like father (Peter McRobbie) refuses Jack's wish for his ashes to be spread "...on some place called Brokeback Mountain," and sternly puts his foot down about the remains being laid on the nearby family plot. After this is expressed, Jack's kind and reservedly suppressed mother (Roberta Maxwell), obviously of a different mindset about her son and who Ennis appears to be, stands at the front door and looks right into Ennis' eyes (out of view of her husband) and politely intones the usual "You come back and see us sometime... you hear now?" with a very poignant, telling look in her eyes - seeming to suggest that she wants Ennis to return at a later date and somehow get Jack's ashes from her out of the watch of her husband, because she wants her son's wishes to be fulfilled. I found this to be a very subtle, open-ended move in Lee's direction (and Maxwell's short performance), which was very touching.
    Basically, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a story of loss, and regret - and ultimately of memory and emotion attached to physical spaces (or times), and the price and value of escaping to them. Ennis is show at film's end (presumably middle aged) relatively alone and somewhat broken. He stands in his trailer and is shown cherishing a jacket Jack wore on their first encounter, with the shirt Ennis wore underneath (a secret momento he discovered hanging in the bedroom closet of Jack's family's house), alongside the most recent mountain invite picture postcard Jack had sent him before he died. Both items are displayed on the inside of a closet door that, when opened, obscures a window view of the outside world (a barren, windswept plain). Ennis swears out loud to keep the upcoming date of what is now the last rendezvous, presumably to fulfill Jack's wish to deliver his remains to his favorite place in the world: a safe space Lureen said Jack had once drunkenly described as "...a place where the blue birds sing all day and the rivers run with whiskey," (mirroring Ennis' criticism of how he thought Jack foolishly saw the mountain hideaway during an argument years before), where "...one could be so at peace that one could sleep while still standing standing up, just like a horse does," a place that, in his mind, Jack was ultimately resigned to accept as paradise; a dreamy fantasy world removed from the worrisome responsibilities of heterosexual families, children, and even work - exactly how the radical right has been trying to portray the gay lifestyle for eons now.

Comments

[Ron]

Wow. Quite articulate and well reasoned. Despite the faults, I did find the film to be of great value and great sentiment.

Thanks for voicing very subtle and real criticism without making any political judgments.

[Dan Bodah]

I just can't stop calling it "Bareback Mountain" by mistake. But then I think, "Wait, those guys didn't have condoms, did they?"

Waiting for the inevitable gay porn takeoff, DB

[buckeye girl]

Interesting, I remember "Boys Don't Cry" very well, because I may hate that movie more than any I've seen in the last 20 years. Similar to your take about Matthew Shepard and the glee you felt when Michelle Williams character wants a divorce, this movie was portrayed as black and white when I felt something totally different. Boys Don't Cry said to me, "Those evil rednecks! Killing someone just because she was gender confused? Why can't we all just get along?" Never mind that the gender confused person robbed people who helped her, seduced someone under the guise that she was a man , endlessly lied to people who cared about her, and was generally an all around terrible person who also had gender issues. Did she deserve to die? Of course not, but she didn't deserve to be martyred either.

It probably didn't help that I'm totally hot for both Brendan Sexton III and Peter Sarsgard who played the evil rednecks.

[Brian Turner]

You should have seen that alternate ending to Tootsie where Hoffman gets dragged down 8th avenue by a semi. Deemed too stark for 1980's Hollywood mainstream films.

[Mark Allen]

How about just Dustin Hoffman being dragged behind a semi?

[kuros]

thank you for seeing past all the hype of this movie
being a homosexual the one thing that i noticed is that we did NOT wear our hair like that in the 60's and 70's and certainly cowboys did not.
Oscar material pleaaaaaase!
Truman yes Brokeback no

[Rob Skeats]

Wow! Great observations and insights! Two points...
There is of course, those on the side of the fence that believe Jack's death was accidental and that the flashback was only as Ennis imagined it. I don't think so, but arguments can be made on both sides and Ang Lee has stated that he left this deliberately vague so that the viewer could make up his/her own mind. Proulx leaves it similarly ambiguous in the novella.
As for Jack's death being a 'shameless analogy' to Matthew Shepard's, one must remember that Proulx released the short story (with the flashback scene)in the New Yorker a whole year before Shepard's death.

[Mark Allen]

Rob - thanks for pointing out the Shepard/Proulx timeline discrepancy (which I was unaware of)! And Jack's violent death possibly being in Ennis' head only - interesting. Although like I said - I didn't pick the up Shepard analogy when I saw the film, but only later when I read reviews and write-ups about the picture.

[redorb]

This is most incisive (and level-headed) review of this film I have read. Thanks!

[Defender90]

Interesting points. I also the costume/hair-mu design was off in places, but I was very moved by the film. I do take issue with the "obviously made-up story" line in your review - I never saw it that way at all. I haven't read the short story but I have since been told Proulx makes it clear in her short story that Jack was, in fact, killed as a result of the tire-changing accident. I thought Lureen's slow-burn anguish in the telephone scene was not based on her hating to lie about Jack's death, but in her dawning realization that she was talking on the phone with the true love of her late husband's life. My assumption about the scene in the film was that either a) Ennis' own association of queer=violent death runs through his mind as he hears the story from Lureen or b) the cutaway scene had nothing to do with Ennis or Lureen, but was an Ang Lee choice to allow the audience to connect the story to the more recent infamy of Wyoming vis-a-vis Matthew Shepard or c) both of the above.

[Jeremy]

Just seen the film in the U.K. We really liked it. We had the assumption that 'Jacks death' was somehow related to the 'other bearded guy' who was meant to be setting up the ranch back home (near his folks) aside/after Ennis - failed to deliver. Maybe Jack had attempted to regain control of his destiny via a new relationship. I mean who could blame him! Maybe it was the bearded guys wifes inlaws who took revenge. Things are left open for you to ponder - set over such a long period of time.

[carrol123]

I am totally agree with them and need not think that any thing should be add further.
Carrol Spncr

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