02.15.06
Brokeback Mountain
I saw Brokeback Mountain today with my beloved husband. It was a very well-done movie, certainly heart-wrenching, but I didn’t like its message.
I have met a number of people who think that being gay is all about the sex, and this movie could certainly reinforce that stereotype. I never saw the protagonists being emotionally intimate with each other, just physically intimate. I never saw them talk, I never saw them make any sort of commitment to each other. They seemed about as emotionally intimate with each other as they were with their wives, maybe less so.
My beloved husband disagrees with me. He thinks that the lack of emotional intimacy or commitment was just a reflection of how badly messed up they were as a result of society’s horribly ill treatment of gay people.
Regardless, the movie made me feel very lucky to be married to my beloved husband: lucky that society approves of our relationship and lucky that he communicates more and better than the protagonists in the film.
Sophie said,
February 16, 2006 at 11:10 pm
My repetitive 2 cents:
I watched brokeback mountain with a friend of mine and after talking about it for an hour or so, i decided that there was a lot more to their relationship than was represented in the movie… since you can’t really show every element of a relationship that last decades in less than 4 hours. The two men probably loved each other immensely, seeing as they were ‘together’ for as long as they were. If homosexuality had been as socially ‘exceptable’ then as it was now, or maybe if they had been in somewhere that homosexuality was more acceptable (i’m not quite sure how gays were received in california back then, but i assume they were treated better in liberal states than in ones like texas and wyoming) then i think they might have taken the relationship to a more… hmm how do i put it… public level? But weren’t able to because of this ill view on gays. if that makes sense. I think that the writer(s) of the movie meant the characters to have the same fears that would have existed in the minds of gay men and women years ago. this fear was probably the largest dividing point in their relationship, because heath ledger’s character was obviously afraid of being lynched for his sexual orientation.
To say that there was no emotional connection, I think, would be a stretch, because if there wasn’t the relationship wouldn’t have gone on as long as it did, and scenes like heath ledger showing up at jake gyllenhaal’s ranch to get bring his ashes back to brokeback mountain would have been omitted, along with the scenes where ledger brought gyllenhaal’s bloody shirt back to his home, or when gyllenhaal spoke his horribly quotable line ‘I wish I knew how to quit you’
So basically, i don’t think this movie was portraying gays in a negative light, or that they weren’t emotionally intimate with each other… i think that the point of the movie was to show that homosexuals have real emotions and that they have to overcome more harassment and ill treatment than anyone should ever impose upon another person. I think it was a great attempt to educate the people who watch the movie about gay rights, legal and otherwise. Of course, it’s totally possible that none of the things I assumed were happening just beyond the camera’s view were there… but hey, I’ll never know either way!
oh, and i do think they should have communicated more in the film, but maybe that was the writer’s comment on how no one wanted to talk about these issues in rural areas in the ‘60s… or maybe they just dropped the ball on that one.
ducky said,
February 16, 2006 at 11:23 pm
My husband agrees with you, that they clearly had a deep emotional connection. They probably did — though I can still imagine someone anti-gay interpreting the connection as purely sexual.
However, they didn’t *share* an emotional connection. They were not intimate. And that was perhaps the saddest thing of all.
Sophie said,
February 17, 2006 at 12:16 am
yeah, i think that, though it was a good movie, it could have been done better so that anti-gay vibes some people are getting wouldn’t have been as present as it was, which was a real shame. what do you think, oscar worthy? or too iffy to get the movie of the year
ducky said,
February 17, 2006 at 10:52 am
I haven’t seen a whole lot of movies this year — maybe three — so I’m not sure I am qualified to judge what the best movie was. Maybe all the rest of the movies were dogs.
It was emotionally wrenching, and it was a novel subject.