Organizing your writing life

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN: I may have to turn in my gay card after this post, but, as usual, I'm not going to hold back: I thought Brokeback Mountain was only so-so. It was WAY too long, a little repetitive and often tedious. That said, Heath Ledger definitely deserves an Oscar nomination, although I'm rooting for Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote.

For those who don' t know, Brokeback Mountain is about two cowboys who meet in 1963 while herding sheep at said mountain and begin a 20 year, clandestine love affair. They both marry women and have children and meet a few times every year for "fishing trips" up at Brokeback Mountain. It's those "fishing trips" that slow the plot, when they should send it to fever pitch. I thought Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger had very little chemistry. For once, I wanted to see more sex...anything to show these two had some bond that could stretch 20 years and cause so much havoc in their lives. I wanted less panoramic vistas of the Midwest and more character detail. At two hours plus, the middle of the film slows to glacial speed, so by the time the sad finale arrives, all I could feel was relief.

Ledger's Ennis Del Mar is the more finely drawn character and is played beautifully. Del Mar is so cold and reserved on the surface, his mumbled words so few, that when raw emotion cracks the surface it's painful to witness. On the other hand, Gyllenhaal plays Jack Twist as the total opposite...a wild, carefree type, who gets positively whiney about wanting to shack up at a ranch of their own. I was hoping that Jack would be the one who would stand up and say, "I don't care what people think," or "I'm gay and I love you," but this never happens. He marries a woman and pleasures himself with male prostitutes in Mexico instead. I know there was a partial disconnect because you got next to nothing as far as backstory on Jack. Luckily, Ennis does have a history and that is brought into play throughout the film. You do get a glimpse of what has made Ennis so remote, and it's chilling. The film really does belong to Ledger's character, and everytime it switched to Gyllenhaal, I got bored. What drove these men to be together? I wanted to see it unfolding, rather than being force fed by the screenplay and Ang Lee's attempt to make this a "universal" love story. I know he was trying to explode some of the myths and stereotypes, but Lee fails rather miserably.

I've fallen for a couple of Ennis Del Mars in my time...maybe that's why this movie seemed a bit "been there, done that" for me. I can think of two guys who were quite willing to let themselves be seduced, but when it came time to commitment or being emotionally honest, they went right back to Straightsville. Maybe that's the other problem I have with this film. Once again, it shows that homosexuality is something to be hidden and unexpressed and it will lead you down the path of despair. The Christian right-wing nutcases have nothing to fear in this film...it might actually work a bit in their favor. I wanted at least one of them to come to terms with their feelings and say something...say anything...about their love. Instead, it's all repressed, bleak and tragic. I don't mind a little tragedy or even a little repression, if there is some redemption in the end.

Admittedly, I've never read Annie Proulx's source material for this film. I'm going to search it out to see how the translation from page to film might have affected the storytelling.