Finally.
Saw Brokeback Mountain with my friend Amy this afternoon, a month after I first tried to see it in L.A. (on opening day) and couldn't get in because every single show was sold out and we were dumbasses and hadn't bought tickets ahead of time. Since this is Virginia Beach, the show wasn't sold out this afternoon, although the theater was pretty crowded, much more so than I would have expected. But then, this is Brokeback Mountain.
Since before the movie even opened I'd been hearing all about how there was less than a minute of sex and 129 minutes of not-sex, but the thing that nobody mentioned was that there's so very much more than a minute of intimacy: that scene in the hotel when they're lying there shirtless, smoking and talking, for instance; the lingering of the camera on their faces as they look at each other when they think the other isn't looking. The way Ennis's face lights up at the very thought that Jack's coming to Wyoming. The way they hate each other for what they make each other feel, and yet they can't help it, and the way Jake Gyllenhaal delivers the line, "I wish I knew how to quit you." When they leave Brokeback and Ennis just falls apart in the alleyway, punches the wall and doesn't know what to do about himself. And I love how you can literally watch Lureen turn into the ice princess, how her hair grows bigger and blonder as she and Jack distance themselves, and I love the conversation between Jack and the sorority girl's husband and it's all just so darned good, and it hurts, but it's a good hurt, the kind of hurt you want to feel again and again.
It reminds me a lot of Lonesome Dove, which isn't particularly surprising, seeing as Larry McMurtry cowrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, in the sense that the characters are driven by some sense of what's right that they alone ascribe to, and it destroys everyone around them and it destroys them, too, and yet they can't change the way they act because they can't see any other options; and even when others show them these options, they can't take them, they can't escape from their convoluted sense of what they have to do, and it makes you want to hurt something, watching these characters tear themselves and everyone else apart, and yet it's so very good, I mean that it's so very right, because that's what we do, we make the wrong decisions and we distance ourselves from the people we want for all the wrong reasons, and it drove me crazy in Lonesome Dove, because everyone in Lonesome Dove seems to do it: fall in love with the wrong person, reject the love that's offered to them, die rather than live a lesser life; and there's some kind of convoluted nobility to it all, a kind of honor that doesn't make a bit of sense but it's there and it's strong. In Brokeback Mountain it's just Ennis that acts this way, really, because all the way through Jack offers him choices and choices and choices and Ennis just can't take them, and it really makes you want to hurt something. Which is exactly how Ennis deals with it all, just hurting things, and he can't deal with it.
And I've completely lost all sense of grammar, but that's what that movie does to you. It's the kind of pain you want to keep going back to.
Since before the movie even opened I'd been hearing all about how there was less than a minute of sex and 129 minutes of not-sex, but the thing that nobody mentioned was that there's so very much more than a minute of intimacy: that scene in the hotel when they're lying there shirtless, smoking and talking, for instance; the lingering of the camera on their faces as they look at each other when they think the other isn't looking. The way Ennis's face lights up at the very thought that Jack's coming to Wyoming. The way they hate each other for what they make each other feel, and yet they can't help it, and the way Jake Gyllenhaal delivers the line, "I wish I knew how to quit you." When they leave Brokeback and Ennis just falls apart in the alleyway, punches the wall and doesn't know what to do about himself. And I love how you can literally watch Lureen turn into the ice princess, how her hair grows bigger and blonder as she and Jack distance themselves, and I love the conversation between Jack and the sorority girl's husband and it's all just so darned good, and it hurts, but it's a good hurt, the kind of hurt you want to feel again and again.
It reminds me a lot of Lonesome Dove, which isn't particularly surprising, seeing as Larry McMurtry cowrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, in the sense that the characters are driven by some sense of what's right that they alone ascribe to, and it destroys everyone around them and it destroys them, too, and yet they can't change the way they act because they can't see any other options; and even when others show them these options, they can't take them, they can't escape from their convoluted sense of what they have to do, and it makes you want to hurt something, watching these characters tear themselves and everyone else apart, and yet it's so very good, I mean that it's so very right, because that's what we do, we make the wrong decisions and we distance ourselves from the people we want for all the wrong reasons, and it drove me crazy in Lonesome Dove, because everyone in Lonesome Dove seems to do it: fall in love with the wrong person, reject the love that's offered to them, die rather than live a lesser life; and there's some kind of convoluted nobility to it all, a kind of honor that doesn't make a bit of sense but it's there and it's strong. In Brokeback Mountain it's just Ennis that acts this way, really, because all the way through Jack offers him choices and choices and choices and Ennis just can't take them, and it really makes you want to hurt something. Which is exactly how Ennis deals with it all, just hurting things, and he can't deal with it.
And I've completely lost all sense of grammar, but that's what that movie does to you. It's the kind of pain you want to keep going back to.