Overall Rating
  Awesome: 62.5%
Worth A Look: 12.95%
Average: 13.39%
Pretty Bad: 4.91%
Total Crap: 6.25%
17 reviews, 122 user ratings
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| Brokeback Mountain |
by Erik Childress
"What Did R. Lee Ermey Say Comes From Texas Again?"
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SCREENED AT THE 2005 TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: Shall we dispense of the pudding jokes right off the top? Or is it overly insensitive to poke fun…er…rib the cowpokes….er….giggle about gay cowboys? Maybe its just in our crude nature to snicker a little bit at an assumption which has been around long before Bonanza was on the air. What do they say about Texas? Steers and queers? It’s precisely the kind of stereotype that the filmmakers behind Brokeback Mountain hope to bring some sensitivity to and wind up doing it quite successfully. One can’t help but think though when it’s all over if the film is as groundbreaking as it is being touted. By excessively compensating with how molds are being shattered, many viewers may overlook the fact that the same material could have made using heterosexual protagonists.In 1963, Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) meet while taking a job for rancher Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) herding sheep up through the titular location. Looking like a pair of Marlboro Men standing outside Joe’s camper, the manly-man connection with their rugged good looks, smoking with a brooding confidence is about to be torn down once tedium begins taking over their trek. Boys will be boys drinking whiskey, letting testosterone boil over into brawls and wrastling horseplay (the latter which Joe witnesses with a suspicious eye.) Then an invitation into the tent for warmth turns into an animalistic release of sexual frustration that ends the following morning a bit more subtly then Steve Martin and John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles with Jack and Ennis insisting that neither is queer. I guess sense memory of Marilyn Monroe and self-stimulation was out of the question. Not hear of The Stranger, boys?
Of course, we know that both men play for the White Sox…er…the other team and when they go their separate ways we can sense, even if they don’t, that a mutual connection will stay with them forever. In all seriousness, this first 40 minutes are the film’s best. The building bond between Jack and Ennis is unrepentantly established and should dispel any inherent snickering to go for an easy joke. When it moves to the next level, it feels less like a shock than just a natural progression in their evolution of a complacent loneliness they’ve probably felt for some time in a period and locale not known for embracing open closets. Once they get off the mountain, that’s when the film begins losing its emotional stability.
Both men later take wives; Ennis takes Alma (Michelle Williams), a shy girl whom he prefers on her stomach and Jack takes Lureen (Anne Hathaway), a rodeo gal with uptight parents who doesn’t mind riding him in the back of a car. Time passes and then they reconnect when Jack visits Ennis at his home. Foolishly they can’t resist themselves instantly, allowing an instant of rapture to be seen in plain view by an even more confused and horrified Alma who knows the sad truth of the “fishing trips” her husband makes a habit of. The film takes on a repetitive quality here like the contented sex of a marriage with the adulterous trips and the hopes of a future together masked with Alma’s hurt and an emotional fortitude that never reaches an apex.
We know nothing of Ennis & Alma’s relationship until we meet them standing together in front of a priest so whatever exists between them already feels distant, leading to no great jumps in their stability since Ennis already looks unhappy on their wedding day. Jack & Lureen’s coupling is provided even less shrift. Most of it is seen through the constant battling of Jack and his disrespecting father-in-law (Graham Beckel), leaving little to remember except another look at the Princess Diaries’ breasts. And when coming to the drawn-out climax of the film, a key development is botched giving the audience little time to process the impact that it has on Jack and Ennis, let alone becoming just a “oh yeah, by the way…” after we’ve invested two hours in the fate of these characters.
What guides us through the less than stellar patches of Brokeback Mountain are a collection of award-worthy performances from those we never thought we’d ever see on a ballot. The latter of that statement doesn’t apply to Gyllenhaal who became a symbol for Generation Y uncertainty in Donnie Darko, continued that streak with Proof and Jarhead right up to this film as the taker (in all definitions of the word) who has found something with Ennis and continues to want no matter what the consequences may be. Michelle Williams, still known all too well from TV’s Dawson’s Creek, does her best dramatic work as the young mother struggling to keep a shield up between her and the love that is being given elsewhere.
But Heath Ledger, seriously, who knew? After his comically applicable turn as Val Kilmer in Lords of Dogtown, the low-key brain of The Brothers Grimm and the title role in the upcoming Casanova, 2005 is literally and professionally, Ledger’s coming out party. After years of being just another pretty boy on the market for casting directors to ignore better actors with, Ledger currently has an apology on record from this critic. Soft-spoken and wounded as Ennis, Ledger has allowed the less-is-more approach to say everything that this character is about and invites us into an understanding not of gay-vs.-straight but loved-vs.-lonely, which is a more powerful statement anyone can attach than to say how “brave” his performance is or the assertion that this film will change the way Hollywood and the general public think.Ang Lee has done wonders in the past with all of the issues presented in Brokeback Mountain; unrequited love (Sense & Sensibility, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), infidelity (The Ice Storm) and the duality of man (Hulk). His Wedding Banquet comically explored a marriage of convenience between a gay man and a woman seeking a green card; which works better as a comedy of errors if you consider that as drama, the deception and sadness of the situation could inevitably lead to a major dislike of one or both of the characters. We’ve seen love stories between men that were entirely platonic (Brian’s Song, The Shawshank Redemption) and nobody felt the need to attack them for not unleashing their true feelings, even if one was set in a prison. DVD companies like TLA, Wolfe and Strand have specialized in bringing the somehow still taboo subject to the market, but like Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia it may get credit for being the first major studio to put the subject matter to the forefront except its mostly hype that’s going to sell tickets based off a “courageous” greenlight. Make it hetero and the same material would be dismissed as soap operary. All Ang Lee has really done with his superbly-acted, beautiful looking drama is bring life to Eric Cartman’s assertion that all arthouse films are nothing but gay cowboys sitting around eating pudding. I guess equality does come when not just the stronger aspects of film can be shared by all sexes, race and orientation but also the weaker ones.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=12764&reviewer=198
originally posted: 12/09/05 16:18:16
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Toronto Film Festival For more in the 2005 Toronto Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
09-Dec-2005 (R)
DVD: 23-Jan-2007
UK
N/A
Australia
26-Jan-2006
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