What about that Brokeback Mountain?

[e_dog]

Brokeback Mtn. is a quality film, albeit rather over-rated. It is definitely worth seeing but does not quite live up to the hype.

it's tone is sort of a hybrid of A River Runs Through It and Midnight Cowboy.

Of course it is nice that they portray homosexual relations as a romantic thing rather than sexual depravity, and illustrate the repression and social difficulties of queerness in a hetero-normative world, but from a moral point of view, what is problematic about the story is the fact that it seems to glorify adultery. I mean, throughout the course of the characters' affair, they are cheating on fiances and/or spouses, the mothers of their children. Its message is, as if, because there is repression, therefore deception is okay. to say that the film is a triumph of gay rights is sort of like saying that the advent of female suicide bombers represents an advance in women's equality.

It definitely has some great lines, that is, when you can actually hear what the actors are saying since they utilize an authentic quiet man's speaking-in-a-soft mumbling voice, tobacco dipping ready-to-throw-a-punch kind of attitude. But the real problem is simply that it is kind of boring at times. This, despite the fact that the movie seems hurried, time is elapsed but plot developments enable you to infer the passage of years, but also sometimes within individual scenes the flow of action is unnaturally quick -- that is, the characters are way too good at understanding each other; the smoothness and predictability of behavior lends it all a rather thin psychological characterization; but maybe that's the way country folk are!

what i mean is, like, when some guy yells at the main character from his car, you know there's gonna be a fight; a lady steps up to the jukebox in the background while the lead is in the foreground, you know that theyre gonna hook-up; one character turns off the TV to assert parental authority, you know there's gonna be a confrontation with the in-law, etc. etc. too much predictability. there are no details for detail's sake, which you find in great cinema; here it all serves to convey stereotyped plot conflicts. most ridiculously of all is that the wife discovers the gay affair within a minute of the arrival of the friend because the guys start kissing immediately upon Glyllenhall's arrival at Ledgers' house as if they did not ever consider the possibility that the wife might look out the front window. not only does it seem implausible and unrealistic, but it also results in the lack of any kind of development to the wife's suspicion, which might have been more dramatic, emotionally suspenseful.

Another thing that is often said is that the film is visually impressive with its wilderness scenery. this is true, but is actually not as good as one would expect given the advertisements. there are more shots of sheep in herds than there are shots that linger on the vistas. again, the film manages the paradoxical feat of being BOTH boring and hurried. it would be preferable if they would have had more scenes of nature of longer duration.

Lastly, from where did the cowboys get so much whisky? i know cowboys are hard drinkers, but they seem to have run out of food in the first few days on the mountain and yet they have enough whisky to get drunk all season. again, the alcohol makes the plot flow smoothly, but at the price of plausibility.

Overall, this movie is better than Urban Cowboy, but not as good as Midnight Cowboy. It's roughly on par with Drugstore Cowboy, to use the scale of American films regarding the fate of cowboys in the modern world.

[e_dog]

"true story"

Person1: That movie is disgusting and immoral! I couldn't watch anymore, had to leave the theatre.

Person2: What? I thouht you were a liberal humanist. Homosexuals are people too.

Person1: Homosexuals? I left after the main characters started shooting and killing animals. Those beasts!