My tired, desiccated gay soul
I think Brokeback Mountain suffered in my perception from ridiculously high expectations. Before I saw it, I heard from numerous trusted sources that it was basically the best movie ever, and while I tried to downplay such critical influences, I guess I failed.
It's not that it's a bad movie, or that I wasn't interested in it. I admired a lot about it, especially Michelle Williams' moving performance as one of the gay cowboys' wives and the twangin-heartstrings score. I guess I just don't understand what everyone finds so moving about it. I failed to buy fully into Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist's purported big gay love, partly because they kept being so goddamn stoic and manly about the whole thing and partly because I want to believe that love finds a way, which they don't.
I hesitate to agree fully with Nathan Lane's sentiments on the subject, if only because I don't think he gives enough credit to how difficult being gay in the American West can be, to this day, but he approached my feelings when interviewed by Katie Couric on "Today":
It's really when [Ledger] said, 'This thing gets hold of us the wrong time, the wrong place, we're dead.' I thought, 'What do you mean, like the A&P? You're in the middle of nowhere! Get a ranch with the guy! Stop torturing these two poor women and get a room! What's the problem?
It's strange to find oneself in the minority on phenomena like Brokeback, especially when questions of politics are involved. All I can say is that I really, really wanted to love it, and I can't say that I did. I would have loved to have left the theater in tears. I would have loved to have been so moved that I felt compelled to send an email to 300 of my closest friends urging them to see it, like a friend of mine did. Unfortunately, my first response was: "Well, at least no-one died of AIDS." And that, friends, is why I am a bad homosexual.
posted by Dave Hughes @ 5:23 PM
4 Comments:
You're not a "bad homosexual". You've actually got the intestinal fortitude to have a mind of your own and speak it. And that is not a "bad" thing, coz you can go to sleep at night knowing that you are real.
Bad homosexual, or post-modern cynic? Both?
Oh Dave! Now that I've officially seen the movie 5 times and read more and more reviews of the film and hear more from other "bad gays", it seems the gays who aren't so moved by the film mostly fall into 2 camps: a) they are expecting a political agenda that the film doesn't live up to, and often accompanying that is a moral imposition (like that of Nathan Lane) that insists on using a modern, urban "gay lib" ethic to judge the closeted actions of the characters (Lane's "Get a roome!" comment) as though Jack and Ennis could simply cultivate overnight an gay identity which would let their love to triumph openly (as Dave, your utterly romantic faith believes :)) and b) those who didn't have an aesthetic or visceral response to the anti-sentimentality, high straint, and subtlety of expression. Is funny how this film is closer to a Wong Kar Wai film than anything else.
You're not a bad homosexual, those are the ones who choose to trash the film simply because others like it so much.
Frankly, I did leave the theatre in tears. But oddly, all that has worn off in the intervening weeks. Real life has imposed, and I'm beginning to believe that rather than being unrealistically repressed, their love was actually unrealistically intense. Sure, they never got a ranch, but they did scrump an awful lot over the years, and did it all while loving each other deeply, in their way. Few of us achieve that, I think, and we ostensibly have far more freedom.
What I appreciate more over time is Mr. Lee's artistry. His use of interior spaces has become especially meaningful to me. Think back to every time a scene was shot indoors, and think of exactly how that interior was a metaphor for the restrictions on Jake and Heath's lives. Even the more hopeful interiors, like Jake's room at the end which is flooded with light, has dark spaces housing secrets.
Maybe I'm in love with a straight guy's art. Scary.
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