Maybe I missed something...
I saw Brokeback Mountain this afternoon. And I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. I can't figure out whether I liked it or not. Here's what I thought.
( Spoilers )
( Spoilers )
I think what you are finding unsatisfying is the *point* of the movie--that your dissatisfaction is the dissatisfaction of the characters, one of whom can't put a name to what his problem is (no, can't actually even acknowledge it exists), and the other of whom can't stop going back to a well that won't produce the water he needs.
And OMG, Ledger? Was absolutely, unflinchingly and unfailingly, perfect. I grew up around men like that, who have feelings but completely don't know how to have them, much less express them, when they are anything other than a very narrow set of things. They do exactly what he does here, which is to retreat behind a stony expression and not complain about that which you can't change. I found, therefore, the moments when he *does* break out of this--the confusion in the tent that first time; the part about having to stand what you can't fix; the standing behind and holding next to the fire--heart-wrenchingly moving.
As for saying love, that would have rung painfully and awfully false.
Yeah, on the whole I think you missed something. Heh.
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There are two kinds of dissatisfaction in movies, books, etc.: There's the kind where the characters are dissatisfied with their lots and the audience sympathizes with them, because they've been similarly dissatisfied in their lives, and characters and audience alike are terribly sad and on the same terribly sad page. And then there's the kind where the audience has no idea what is going on with the characters, because whatever they're doing on the screen is unsupported and arbitrary and has failed to appeal to the audience members' own experiences, and then the audience is dissatisfied not out of sympathy for the characters but out of the distinct feeling that they've been cheated. The first kind of dissatisfaction is what you're supposed to feel in movies. But the second kind is what I felt, as if I missed big parts of the storyline.
Where was the continuity? In five minutes, the protagonists went from being disconnected and indifferent to being involved in a devoted relationship that would last 20 years. How on earth could the director have expected us to to along with that? He could maybe get away with it, but just barely, in a het movie, because everyone expects men and women to get together eventually--and even then, having so little buildup for a relationship would be tough. But there's just no way it could work in a slash movie, partially because of the extra societal barriers between two men and partially because of these specific men's introverted personalities; not to mention how far-fetched it is for any relationship to develop so fast in the first place. There was a burden on Lee on the actors to make us believe that what happened was plausible, and they failed in that.
That was one of my main issues with the movie. My problem with Heath Ledger isn't that he was so stubborn and unemotional in the years after 1963 (because we all know, life and fiction are full of such people), but that he got so attached to Jake Gyllenhaal so quickly in a display that was uncharacteristic of him. This only adds to the implausibility.
But what's worse is that despite having all this turmoil inside, Ledger gave no hint of it. No one expected him to declare his undying love or write a sonnet or anything, but he gave us hardly so much as a pained or confused look, not after that first summer ended. I liked those brief, heart-wrenching moments at the beginning. The only problem is that they stopped. And they didn't resume until after Jake Gyllenhaal died. Half the movie was an emotional drought. Ledger should have continued to give us these hints of his raw thoughts, because I agree that they were quite poignant.
He should not have stopped using those moments to express himself, even if he did change to become a stonier person. To retreat so deeply inside oneself just may be realistic, but it is not artistic. There needs to be some display of emotion, otherwise what you have is somebody acting like a totally normal man, and a boring one, at that, which is not what we want to see in movies. Movies are for romanticized (which is not to say romantic) versions of everything, including painful inner struggles. Movies just can't communicate emotion by having a character who is so stony he never does anything. What works better is a man who mostly never shows emotion, but who slips every now and then. The phrase "He didn't cry" isn't nearly as stirring as "He tried not to cry." Not that crying is the best action in Heath Ledger's case, but there needed to be something, if only the tiniest hint of it, in order to set off the absence of everything else. Unrealistic? Maybe a very little bit. But no matter how realistic art is, it is pointless if it can't stir emotion in its viewers. A man who drinks a lot and grunts instead of speaking is not going to communicate any pathos. He was nearly impossible to identify with.
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