Brokeback Review
Sad and reflective, I emerged from the theater after Brokeback Mountain. It's a great film. As a piece of art, it's just great. The pacing is damn near perfect, the panoramic views are very Chinese (and very good), and the acting was uniformly convincing. And, yes, the sex between the two cowboys was fun to watch... but that really seemed insignificant next to the storyline.
It was a fascinating view of homosexuality. It was almost completely alien, a vestige like a 30 year-old Marlboro ad lining the back of a drawer. For me, there was stark contrast between the audience and the characters. "You know I ain't queer," Ennis says the day after they fuck. "Me neither," Jack confirms. But everyone in the audience is queer. Not these kind of cowboys-who-have-sex-with-cowboys, but rhetoric-appropriating queers. There are probably folks who still have conversations like Ennis and Jack, but I'd bet that nearly no one in the theater would. We're past that. This suffering is a generation behind us. Or, as I noted during the movie: "[we're] no more likely a part of this manly Western love than we are likely to fuck Jake Gyllenhall."
Manliness is everything, for these characters. It's not a Tom of Finland show, or a reverse-double-ironic gym posture. These are just guys, taught not to cry and used to tough labor. They're experiencing homosexuality before the masculine crust was broken. Nowadays, the earth lies in crumbled ruins at our feet, with genderfuck commonplace and an acceptable blend of femininity in our manhood. In the world of these characters, the crust lies unbroken and gay love is only possible through volcanic eruptions of passion (and violence).
The emotions are all that connect me to these characters. Fear and rage and sorrow and despair. Self-denial, pain, paranoia. Watching these two men -- Ennis, especially -- retreat from love into a sterile "acceptable" world just broke my heart. It's the needless suffering that he endures that moves me the most.. and reminds me of my teenage years. Whether self-inflicted or inflicted by others, it's all so tragically needless. It's the kind of suffering that really makes the genre of "tragic romance" come back to life. It's also the kind of suffering that reminds me of Matthew Shephard and the long, long way we have to go before glbt folk can freely live (and love).
It was a fascinating view of homosexuality. It was almost completely alien, a vestige like a 30 year-old Marlboro ad lining the back of a drawer. For me, there was stark contrast between the audience and the characters. "You know I ain't queer," Ennis says the day after they fuck. "Me neither," Jack confirms. But everyone in the audience is queer. Not these kind of cowboys-who-have-sex-with-cowboys, but rhetoric-appropriating queers. There are probably folks who still have conversations like Ennis and Jack, but I'd bet that nearly no one in the theater would. We're past that. This suffering is a generation behind us. Or, as I noted during the movie: "[we're] no more likely a part of this manly Western love than we are likely to fuck Jake Gyllenhall."
Manliness is everything, for these characters. It's not a Tom of Finland show, or a reverse-double-ironic gym posture. These are just guys, taught not to cry and used to tough labor. They're experiencing homosexuality before the masculine crust was broken. Nowadays, the earth lies in crumbled ruins at our feet, with genderfuck commonplace and an acceptable blend of femininity in our manhood. In the world of these characters, the crust lies unbroken and gay love is only possible through volcanic eruptions of passion (and violence).
The emotions are all that connect me to these characters. Fear and rage and sorrow and despair. Self-denial, pain, paranoia. Watching these two men -- Ennis, especially -- retreat from love into a sterile "acceptable" world just broke my heart. It's the needless suffering that he endures that moves me the most.. and reminds me of my teenage years. Whether self-inflicted or inflicted by others, it's all so tragically needless. It's the kind of suffering that really makes the genre of "tragic romance" come back to life. It's also the kind of suffering that reminds me of Matthew Shephard and the long, long way we have to go before glbt folk can freely live (and love).