Two teenagers meet for the first time when they seek a job which requires them to be with each other for months on end. Awkward around each other at first, their isolation forces them to become co-dependent, developing into friendship, until one night they get drunk and end up sleeping together. Horrified by their actions, the next morning they deny their actions, but find themselves inexorably falling in love despite their stations in life forcing them to never be together. Their idyllic time in isolation ends and each goes their separate ways, meeting and marrying other people. Yet their continual feeling for the other can't or won't be denied, and for the next 20 years the two continue a love affair, periodically meeting up to re-create their teenage autumn-winter together, equally as a way to escape the pressures of their day-to-day life and also to be with their soulmate.
And that is the plot of Brokeback Mountain.
You know that if one of the protagonists was a woman, there wouldn't be a fuss about this being a *gay cowboy* movie or jokes like *Brokebutt Mountain.* It would be compared to other stories that involve love denied/thwarted and all that stuff, and would join the pantheon of other 'classic' love stories like Romeo and Juliet, An Affair to Remember, The English Patient, Innocence, or even Titanic. Yet at the same time, if the movie wasn't about two men in love, I wonder if it would have affected me as much. IMO, because the movie is about two men, it changes a topic that seems so mundane - an illicit love affair - into a movie that raises thoughts about the motivation behind love - why do we fall for who we do, what would we do to be near the one we love, and ultimately, regret from repressing love and missed opportunities. That's not to say that these other movies didn't address these issues, but perhaps by changing it to two males, it makes more apparent issues that may not seem obvious in a hetero affair.
1. The start of hetero teenage love may be chalked up to infatuation, loneliness, lust, or boredom. Watching Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes get it on seems a lot more obvious than why Heath and Jake fall in love (pretty as they may be).
2. Likewise, the motivation continued mature love affair seems pretty straightforward to the audience when you're Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes (The End of the Affair) compared to Heath with a bad 70s haircut and Jake with a moustache.
3. Divorce may have been a stigma in the late 60s/early 70s, but if after your divorce you chose to shack up with another woman, that may have raised a few eyebrows but it wouldn't put your life in peril - a genuine reason why you wouldn't get together with someone you love who loves you back.
4. By making the protagonists two men, it reinforces that all avenues are closed. If they were women, they could probably have gotten away with living together as spinsters. But as men in that day, age, and environment? Hell no it was never gonna happen.
Ultimately, while this is a love story, I think it's a story about regret. Almost immediately afterwards, I compared Brokeback to The Shawshank Redemption and was told I was making a really big call. I contemplated why I said that and came to this conclusion - while Shawshank is about how hope can keep you alive in even the most dire situation, Brokeback is the opposite side of the coin. The trappings of happiness (Jake marries a woman whose father runs a successful company and thus he pulls himself out of poverty, Heath remains poor but has a wife and two daughters adore him) and a beautiful environment mean little when you're living a life full of regret for missed opportunities and dreams due to fears about failure or expectations of what you are supposed to become....expectations from family/friends/society. Hope may keep you alive, but continued regret crushes the soul. After watching this, I begin to feel a bit more understanding for Prince Charles and Camilla.
The acting in this movie is sheer powerhouse. I can't imagine it would be easy to act as if you're falling in love with a member of your own sex, but Heath and Jake make it so believable. You being to feel for the characters: Their joy when they're together, Heath's depression with his poverty, Jake's frustration with his disrespectful in-laws, fear and anger when they realise people know their secret. Perhaps their best is when after four years of separation, their complete giddiness at seeing each other again leads to taking a genuine embrace and kiss in broad daylight. But Michelle Williams is the one you really need to keep an eye on. In her first scene at their wedding, Heath seems uncomfy (and we know why), but Michelle seems hopeful, if a little bit simple. She has genuine affection for her husband that becomes confusion, shock, frustration, world-weariness, and finally anger at her lot in life. The expression on her face when she sees Jake and Heath kiss, rather than quickly pull away, she stands and watches for a nearly a minute, her stupefaction as what she's seeing registers but she can't comprehend it, her silent withdrawal into their apartment and inane question "Texans don't drink coffee?" to Heath when he tells her he and Jake are heading out fishing immediately. After their divorce and an uncomfortable Thanksgiving with her new husband, she releases all her rage and humiliation - you're at once fearful that she'll let out Heath's secret but at the same time, sympathetic to her grief.
There are a few scenes of kissing and implied sex, with only one *full* scene, which would be the initial 'tent scene.' You're left with no illusions as to what who's doing to whom but at the same time its an almost completely dark shot so its possibly the least graphic sex scene since the cursory one in KOH. Online reviews have questioned the necessity of the scene, that it was unrealistic etc. But I pose this question - in an age where sex is considered integral to love, where nasal spray technology is spouted over the radio to help guys give their ladies extended pleasure and stop the flop, would it be widely accepted that their love was complete and mutual if all it consisted of was longing glances? Would you believe that it would have lasted 20 years if all they had was a hug every few years? Was the scene in Monster's Ball really necessary? I don't know, but the two scenes are essentially same: Two people, drunk, due to their environment their relationship is considered unacceptable, have a spontaneous moment that acts as an outletting of emotion. Replace one of them with a girl in Brokeback and it wouldn't raise too many eyebrows.
If there's something I found ridiculous about the movie, its that the actors only show the passing of time by the changing of hair. They may be in their late 30s/early 40s by the end of the movie, but apart from some crowsfeet around Heath's eyes, the leads look as dewy as the first scenes they appear in. Also, I know rural folk aren't exactly known for being articulate and eloquence with beautiful diction, but sometimes the mumbling got so that I couldn't understand what was being said. That said, Brokeback Mountain is not the movie for you if you are sure in your convictions that homosexual love/sex is disgusting and unnatural. As much as we can debate whether this movie has a pro-gay agenda, whatever, the messages that come from this story would probably not be as strong if one of the leads were female. The movie does trade a bit on its topic - it is highly thought provoking, but it requires that you at least be sympathetic to the situation they are in.
I don't know if Brokeback Mountain is a perfect movie, but it's definitely a thought provoking one, that keeps you occupied over its 144 minute running time. And considering that this movie has kept me thinking for a days after its viewing, running over and over again in my head what various things mean (what I've written here is only a fraction of what I've discussed with others), I'd say this movie is definitely worth the buzz it's garnered.
9/10
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