Come Anticipate "Brokeback Mountain" With Me

No, and no.

A Western by definition is not centered solely on a romance. A manhunt, a cattle drive, defeating the railroad baron ... In fact, the romance usually is soured by/interferes with this objective. But cuz BBM has the right hats and scenes at rodeos, got-damn, it must be a Western.

i do think the sort of pat critical pronouncement that "it's a western" is one of those mildly "shocking" statements that doesn't really hold water. so i'm basically agreeing with you.

more to the point, what PURPOSE does calling this film a Western serve? not a very interesting one to my mind. yes, it's about the West. yes, it's about ranch hands in big hats. but it otherwise doesn't engage (critically or otherwise) with the "Western" syntax.... which is not a criticism.

Rancho Notorious: But she made the wules on that wanch! Very political! Plus it has manhunt / suspense / climactic shootout elements, doesn't it? (It's been years.)

This is brilliant.

or like every melodrama ever made for that matter

(not a bad thing!!)

-- ShawShank Rambo Connection

what did you think it meant?

the first half played out like a silent movie, if there had been no dialogue or sound you would have been able to follow the action quite closely, partly becasue the camera lingers so long on the charaters faces and because of how conventional Ang Lee's language is (i mean this in a good way). Also it has lots of those kinds of shots that act as foreshadowing devices ( As soon as Anne Hathaway's red hat comes off you know Jack is going to mary her) or to fill in for action off camera (shot of exterior of tent/ shot of clouda passing across the moon/ shot of jack and ennis holding hands etc), or which are just cliche'd shots used well (the rear view mirror as jack drives away from ennis).

another thing about the first half of the movie is that it doesn't communicate any overhelming passion or joy or even, apart from a brief scene witnessed by the boss, any fun between the men so that you are, to an extent, left wondering why the romance kicks off in the first place and why ennis, in particular, is so keen to revisit it 4 years later. i think you can look at that as a strength or a weakeness. it's possibly a strength in that the film maker is trying to communicate that there's degree of nostalgia (for simpler times without the commitment of wives and children to look after) that pulls the men back together.

The Performaces are all pretty good, especially Heath Ledger (to my amazement), Michelle Williams and Roberta Maxwell, incredibly moving in those brief scenes as Jack's Mother. Anna Hathaway isn't so much bad as miscast. Here's Annie Proulx's hilarious appraisal of Heath Ledger's Performance:

"Heath Ledger erased the image I had when I wrote it. He was so visceral. How did this actor get inside my head so well? He understood more about the character than I did. This isn't nice for a 70-year-old woman to say, but it was a skullfuck."

Skullfuck!

the film gets much stronger once it opens out to include other charaters. i thought the scenes with both Ennis's daughter and his new waitress girlfriend worked particularly well andit would have been nice to see more of them but, since Proulx herself says to little of them it, at least, stays true to her story.

Of course the key to Ennis's love for jack is that he never really appreciates the man until he's gone. there's a hint of this with the final scene at the lake but the film packs quite a punch in the beautifully judged scene where Ennis finds the shirts in Jack's room. i had to fight back the tears at this point. The final scene and the shot afteR Jack's daughter leaves the trailer are almost unbearably moving.

The movie has been discussed so much that we've almost overlooked what it does superlatively well, of which that first scene is a fine example. It's pretty clear that Jack is cruising Ennis; what's remarkable is that Lee lets the scene play. It's been a long time since a mainstream film eschewed dialogue for cinematography, body language, and the sheer gorgeousness of the actors.

another thing about the first half of the movie is that it doesn't communicate any overhelming passion or joy or even, apart from a brief scene witnessed by the boss, any fun between the men so that you are, to an extent, left wondering why the romance kicks off in the first place and why ennis, in particular, is so keen to revisit it 4 years later.

During their idyll on Brokeback Mountain there are hints. Ennis gets upset when Aguirre calls them back a few weeks early. Their goodbye is very well acted: watch how Gyllenhaal tries to stay non-chalant and fails miserably.

Jack, the one most likely to live on Castro Street, seeks him out on a hunch. His moneyed married life was going nowhere; he takes a chance and sends a postcard to the last guy with whom he had any fun (it's clear he's interested in other men besides Ennis), with no hope that Ennis will respond.

(not a bad thing!!)

Nah, of all that genres that live on, I'm most ready to bury this one.

Sarah Schulman from Slate's year-in-culture summary:

Brokeback opened the door to a far more complex look at how homophobia destroys people's lives, the consequences of cruelty on gay people's emotional stability, and how familial homophobia is the place where much of this is enforced. Where the movie fell short was in the acknowledgement of gay subculture and rebellion. It seems unlikely to me that Jack Twist would have missed the existence of the gay revolution. All he had to do was turn on the television or go to church to hear about Anita Bryant and Gay Liberation in Dade County, or stumble onto the Gay Rodeo circuit, or go to a dentist's office to see Leonard Matlovich on the cover of Time magazine.

http://www.slate.com/id/2133842

Of course he didn't. Check out his sideburns and 'stache!

said the music jarred a little in places tho; which I didn't notice

"Ennis, girls don't fall in love with fun"

"I wish I knew how to quit you" was a little wishy-washier and whatever heath was saying, around that time, too, wasn't great but oh well

totally

There were problems - neither wife had enough screentime to be either really good or really bad (though MW's eyes/reaction shots when she first sees Jack and Ennis were fantastic), and that same guitar line that played whenever they were together got annoying fast, but the strings that blended into white noise at other times were a nice touch.

In a way, I guess all the stuff upthread about it catering to hetero audiences and not being all that radical in its depiction of homosexuality, etc. is right, but I think that's because the gayness (as promoted) was a red herring. I saw a movie about longing and repression and being stuck in the same damn place your entire life, unable to save yourself or make a better life.

The last shot: after Ennis buttons up Jack's shirt he looks at a postcard of Brokeback Mountain, mumbling "Jack, I swear..." then the camera pans away to the open window.

It is devastating. He's still keeping the love of his life in the closet.

Last night's Tonight Show appearance by Heath Ledger was fairly remarkable, because Ledger and Leno managed to talk for a solid 15 minutes, much of it about Ang Lee and Brokeback, and never mention the word gay or anything approximating it.

Ledger: "I just looked at it as an incredible opportunity to play this, you know...complex, lonely figure..."

The omission seemed fairly obvious to me...

http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/2006/01/talk_about_brok.html

crosspost

nick and I were sure we recognised her from something else but imdb says she hasn't been in anything I'd have seen

See Havoc, in which she plays a brazen teenage strumpet.

the movie goes for a solid two hours without mentioning the word gay!

S1ocki:

"You know I ain't no queer."
"Me neither."

When Jack's mother helps Ennis put Jack's shirt in the bag, does she put Jack's slip Jack's ashes in there too? I know there was a moment between Ennis and Jack's mom, but I didn't quite see / don't remember what exactly happened.

If so, perhaps Ennis in the last scene is swearing he will scatter Jack's ashes on Brokeback... even though it may be a while, what with his daughter wedding and his history of letting jack down, etc.? I dunno.

But Jay and Heath didn't even mention "stemmin the rose"! (and presumably they're not closeted 1960s sheep herders)

Compare his interview to Gyllenhaal's last week, in which the gay stuff was NOT ignored and Gyllenhaal was as open and coltish as Jack Twist. Maybe cuz he's more at ease in the spotlight.

If so, perhaps Ennis in the last scene is swearing he will scatter Jack's ashes on Brokeback... even though it may be a while, what with his daughter wedding and his history of letting jack down, etc.? I dunno.

Nope. It's ambiguous. Again, the story (and I paraphrase): Ennis mumbles, "Jack, I swear" even though Ennis is not the swearing kind and Jack had never asked him to swear anything.