I wrote the following review in October 2007 for the movie Brokeback Mountain on Netflix as a response to reviews I was reading from viewers. I felt that some of those reviewers were missing the crux of the movie and some were bordering on homophobia. This was my response to them.
I found this movie to be a cinematic masterpiece and one whose style and content many reviewers in here (Netflix) may have missed the basis of. This movie goes beyond being a 'gay' movie into a movie that is collective in scope and leaves us with something to learn and take away from. In regards to the slow pace of the movie as some have complained, I think that it is was being purposefully used. The slow panning of the landscape not only depicts the sublime and expansive landscape but also helps to magnify the banality and mundaneness of small rural mid-western towns and Ennis' life in particular. The director Ang Lee, uses a similar tactic in the movie Ice Storm to create a palpable chill depicted through the weather and through the detachment of the characters' lives). Brokeback Mountain is not an 'agenda movie' trying to validate the deceit and actions of these men as some have suggested but rather to serve as evidence and reminder that living a double life is harmful not only to those you deceived but to those that do the deception as well. The women in this story are as much a victim of the rigid social conformity prevalent during that time as the men are. They are afflicted by the betrayal the men are consigned to create.
This movie does not have a happy Hollywood ending nor can this story be sugar-coated. It instead leaves us with no consolation or resolution and makes us feel the regret and frustration of understanding oneself only when its too late. Unfortunately history is seen with 20/20 hindsight vision and in this post-Will and Grace society in which same-sex lifestyles are much more visible and tolerated than it ever has been, it is hard for us to situate ourselves at a time and place when gay men (and lesbians) had no role models nor narratives in which to live their lives by. This movie gives us an understanding of the actions of individuals during a time when their desire (homosexuality) was considered a pathological disease, their acceptance ('coming out') was a social death sentence, and their love (universal and whole) was riddled with guilt. These men and many like them were resigned into living their entire lives either denying their desires or fulfilling them in the dark shadows of shame.
This movie does not have a happy Hollywood ending nor can this story be sugar-coated. It instead leaves us with no consolation or resolution and makes us feel the regret and frustration of understanding oneself only when its too late. Unfortunately history is seen with 20/20 hindsight vision and in this post-Will and Grace society in which same-sex lifestyles are much more visible and tolerated than it ever has been, it is hard for us to situate ourselves at a time and place when gay men (and lesbians) had no role models nor narratives in which to live their lives by. This movie gives us an understanding of the actions of individuals during a time when their desire (homosexuality) was considered a pathological disease, their acceptance ('coming out') was a social death sentence, and their love (universal and whole) was riddled with guilt. These men and many like them were resigned into living their entire lives either denying their desires or fulfilling them in the dark shadows of shame.
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