GAY OSCARS

[wertz]

I came across an entry in Obsidian Wings' blog yesterday on the potential Academy Awards nominations of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, which raised an interesting point, but spawned an excellent satiric response. First, the blog (excerpted):

Why is Jake Gylllenhaal being nominated for "Best Supporting Actor" in "Brokeback Mountain" by

Comments

Landmark film??

[anonymous]

I neither know nor care whether Brokeback is a landmark film. We have to see how it holds up over the next 10-20 years to even determine that.
but, in the meantime....

I can say outright, i love it. Have seen it repeatedly & have no plan to stop. As a gay man, when
i first watched the film, sure I wanted more. I wanted the boys to have more time together, I wanted to see more intimacy, more of raw funk of Annie Proulx's story. But after seeing it again, I quit worrying about what i wasn't getting & started to notice what is all there.

Yes it's a sad tale. It's meant to be. But it is also one the richest, most textured & nuanced films i've seen in years. Starting with Heath Ledger's performance. You can argue or get snarky about the "bravery" issue all you want. Heath, himself, in multiple interviews has downplayed or corrected the idea that he was brave to take this role. But i would disagree, i think his perfomance is brave. Not because he played gay, but because he gave himself so completely and thoroughly over to the charcter. He lived in, embodied Ennis del Mar. He made that character and his conflict/pain palpable and very real. Creatively, artistically...that was a very powerful and brave performance.

Also, for all the sadness, longing the film embodies, there are many traces of tenderness and warmth. Everytime Ennis ribs Jack about his harmonica. Each of their fireside conversations is filled with gentle but genuine humor. As are other seemingly minor moments in the film, like the encounters we see with Monroe(the grocery store owner & Alma's 2nd husband). At the grocery store he schools Ennis on what condiments are, & at thanksgiving dinner we have Ennis sharing a mundane rodeo story with his 2 girls bookended by Monroe and his electic carving knife. Details like this seem dismissable at first, but aside from being funny, they with very little, convey so much character information and insight into Ennis-Alma-Monroe relationship. There are similarly, simple but potent details in the Jack-Lureen storyline.

And as for the adaptation of the short story. I, personally, was thankfully to lose lines like "gun's going off". Clearly, when reading her story, neither actor chosen for the lead parts really fits her physical description of the these 2 characters. She has written in respone to this herself. But, i think overall, the film stayed remarkablely true to essence & heart her short story, which i think is beautifully conveyed in this passage below:

What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.

They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you're sleepin on your feet like a horse," and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words "see you tomorrow," and the horse's shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone.

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.

Re: Landmark film??

[wertz]

Sorry, I didn't see this until now. Not to counter your opinion, but to clarify my own:

And as for the adaptation of the short story. I, personally, was thankfully to lose lines like "gun's going off".
Difference between us, I guess. The line itself isn't highly pertinent, but its expression of the visceral, physical nature of the relatonship is. Sure, the film had tenderness and warmth in subdued abundance, but I had no sense of the fact that we all experience the world through our bodies, Ennis and Jacl included. I could read their pain in every seciond frame, but I never smelled their sweat - and the short story is moving not because it's some sort of frustrated valentine, but because what is being thwarted exists on the most primal level, based on the deepest desire.

But, i think overall, the film stayed remarkablely true to essence & heart her short story, which i think is beautifully conveyed in [the] passage below...
The "hunger" that Ennis remembers in your quote may be "sexless", but it is distinctly physical nonetheless. The next image is of the union of their two bodies as "a single column". He remembers Jack's breath, his rocking motion, his heartbeat - not some disembodied sense of well-being. The film may live up to your quoted paragraphs devoid of context, but to me it didn't live up to the final sentence of the penultimate paragraph:

And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and relief; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.
Ledger and Lee captured the pillow, but not the sheets. You will doubtless read this as me saying "There wasn't enough sex." Not in the least. There wasn't enough sense that these two men ever [i]had[/i] sex.

As to Ledger's palpably creative, artistic conflict/pain, well... there was a lot of taciturn acting, but it succeeded only as an independent character study, not as part of the unfolding of a relationship.

Bottom line: The short story has moved me to tears each time I've read it. It has tugged at my own senses of loss and pain and compassion and rage. I cannot say the same for the film.