Brokeback Mountain
Okay, here it is: the inevitable Brokeback Mountain post. No spoilers.
Pete and I saw Brokeback Mountain on Saturday. Pete is so sweet that it's occasionally alarming. Under normal circumstances, I'm not sure I would have asked him if he wanted to go see this movie, because I wouldn't have been sure if I was getting an honest answer or an answer he thought would make me happy. Every DJ on the air calling it "the gay cowboy movie" does not make straight men very interested in it. (From what I can tell, not one of the DJ's in question has actually bothered to see the movie, but I guess that's beside the point). However, I figured since it was my birthday weekend, I got to do a few things just because they'd make me happy.
When we bought our tickets, the sixteen-year-old kid at the counter looked straight at Pete and said, "Let me guess--she picked the movie?" I smiled sweetly at him and told him it was my birthday--I could do whatever the hell I wanted. Afterwards, I asked Pete if it had been worth seeing, or kind of a waste of time. He said that while it wasn't something he'd have picked on his own, it was definitely worth seeing. Since I've seen a few movies like that, myself (Dude, Where's My Car? comes to mind), I can accept that.
Now for the nitty-gritty. Brokeback Mountain is not "the gay cowboy movie." That is an accurate description, but not an appropriate one, rather like if I were to describe Gone with the Wind as "the gold-digger story." Brokeback Mountain is a love story. That it happens to be between two men is contextually relevant, but not really relevant to the theme of the movie, let alone its execution.
I saw a ten-minute "making of" featurette, during which they evidently asked both the lead actors about the love scenes. One of them laughed and explained the level of detail in which they'd choreographed those. The other one said (and excuse me if I don't have the words exact), "Filming love scenes is always awkward, whether it's with a guy or a girl."
I think that more important to whether or not you'd want to see it is the fact that it doesn't pull any emotional punches. While there are not a lot of sex scenes in the movie, there is nothing delicate about what is there: You're left knowing exactly what's going on. There are a lot of high emotions and outbursts, including yelling and fighting. The intensity of the human interactions within the movie is often gut-wrenching. In my opinion, this makes for a good movie. But it's not to everyone's taste. And half the theatre cried, I think. I don't usually cry at movies--I sniffle a lot, but it doesn't usually result in free-flowing waterworks. I cried two or three actual tears during this movie.
The acting and direction are phenomenal. In fact, they're both more striking for the fact that there's so much silence. A lot of movies are defined by dialogue. This one is defined by what happens between the words. Glances. Expressions. Body language. Every character is drawn with such intensity that you see the frisson between personalities on the screen. And some of that is the sheer skill of the actors, and some of it is the director knowing exactly what he wants out of a scene, and getting it.
The thing that I was not expecting, that caught me off-guard, was the cinematography. It's just breathtaking, and sometimes, it's breathtaking very quietly. Sweeping vistas are easy to shoot. Getting the scene framed just exactly right is harder. Here, sometimes the cinematography was such that your attention in a frame would be in one location, and you'd see something in a different location, and go, "Wait a minute--did I really see that? Did he really do that?" And the answer, of course, is yes. It was done that way on purpose.
Yeah, it's good. Probably great. Kind of rough to sit through, maybe. And yeah, it's a love story . . . but in the last two minutes of the film, it becomes something more than that. I won't give it away. In one of my better literature classes, the professor hadn't liked any of the novel-writing books he looked at, so he had us use a screen-writing book as the class text. The author of the book mentioned that you always ask yourself, "So what's it about?" when you're writing a script. And then you ask yourself, "So what's it really about?" Brokeback Mountain is about being in love, will-ye, nil-ye. It's about being wrong, even when you're right. Or right, even when you're wrong. But in those last two minutes, you ask, "So what's it really about?" and the whole movie becomes something much greater than that.
Pete and I saw Brokeback Mountain on Saturday. Pete is so sweet that it's occasionally alarming. Under normal circumstances, I'm not sure I would have asked him if he wanted to go see this movie, because I wouldn't have been sure if I was getting an honest answer or an answer he thought would make me happy. Every DJ on the air calling it "the gay cowboy movie" does not make straight men very interested in it. (From what I can tell, not one of the DJ's in question has actually bothered to see the movie, but I guess that's beside the point). However, I figured since it was my birthday weekend, I got to do a few things just because they'd make me happy.
When we bought our tickets, the sixteen-year-old kid at the counter looked straight at Pete and said, "Let me guess--she picked the movie?" I smiled sweetly at him and told him it was my birthday--I could do whatever the hell I wanted. Afterwards, I asked Pete if it had been worth seeing, or kind of a waste of time. He said that while it wasn't something he'd have picked on his own, it was definitely worth seeing. Since I've seen a few movies like that, myself (Dude, Where's My Car? comes to mind), I can accept that.
Now for the nitty-gritty. Brokeback Mountain is not "the gay cowboy movie." That is an accurate description, but not an appropriate one, rather like if I were to describe Gone with the Wind as "the gold-digger story." Brokeback Mountain is a love story. That it happens to be between two men is contextually relevant, but not really relevant to the theme of the movie, let alone its execution.
I saw a ten-minute "making of" featurette, during which they evidently asked both the lead actors about the love scenes. One of them laughed and explained the level of detail in which they'd choreographed those. The other one said (and excuse me if I don't have the words exact), "Filming love scenes is always awkward, whether it's with a guy or a girl."
I think that more important to whether or not you'd want to see it is the fact that it doesn't pull any emotional punches. While there are not a lot of sex scenes in the movie, there is nothing delicate about what is there: You're left knowing exactly what's going on. There are a lot of high emotions and outbursts, including yelling and fighting. The intensity of the human interactions within the movie is often gut-wrenching. In my opinion, this makes for a good movie. But it's not to everyone's taste. And half the theatre cried, I think. I don't usually cry at movies--I sniffle a lot, but it doesn't usually result in free-flowing waterworks. I cried two or three actual tears during this movie.
The acting and direction are phenomenal. In fact, they're both more striking for the fact that there's so much silence. A lot of movies are defined by dialogue. This one is defined by what happens between the words. Glances. Expressions. Body language. Every character is drawn with such intensity that you see the frisson between personalities on the screen. And some of that is the sheer skill of the actors, and some of it is the director knowing exactly what he wants out of a scene, and getting it.
The thing that I was not expecting, that caught me off-guard, was the cinematography. It's just breathtaking, and sometimes, it's breathtaking very quietly. Sweeping vistas are easy to shoot. Getting the scene framed just exactly right is harder. Here, sometimes the cinematography was such that your attention in a frame would be in one location, and you'd see something in a different location, and go, "Wait a minute--did I really see that? Did he really do that?" And the answer, of course, is yes. It was done that way on purpose.
Yeah, it's good. Probably great. Kind of rough to sit through, maybe. And yeah, it's a love story . . . but in the last two minutes of the film, it becomes something more than that. I won't give it away. In one of my better literature classes, the professor hadn't liked any of the novel-writing books he looked at, so he had us use a screen-writing book as the class text. The author of the book mentioned that you always ask yourself, "So what's it about?" when you're writing a script. And then you ask yourself, "So what's it really about?" Brokeback Mountain is about being in love, will-ye, nil-ye. It's about being wrong, even when you're right. Or right, even when you're wrong. But in those last two minutes, you ask, "So what's it really about?" and the whole movie becomes something much greater than that.
posted by Journey | 10:39 AM
2 Comments:
We're thinking about this movie. We're thinking hard about this movie. The question we're asking is 'will it break us'?
High emotional content isn't very good for some of us, and this seems to be the king of movie that will get everyone's attention. This is not a good thing.
A shame, because this sounds like a very good movie.
Aside amusement: The password to get this put in was 'vfrpg'. We wonder if the 'frpg' was a sign or not.
I think the most worrisome thing for you would be the fights. Not for any violence actually done. Just for the stress level. If that doesn't concern you, then I'd say, go see it. You will cry. But it will take you by surprise, and you'll still leave feeling glad you saw it.
Post a Comment
<< Home