muckefuck | Flashback Mountain

Flashback Mountain

Many thanks to

mollpeartree, who braved the cold we should've been having for months now to make the long trek from her ~~gang-~~groups-of-individuals-infested neighbourhood on the South Side to join me in Yuppie Central for Brokeback Mountain. I tried to keep my expectations modest, as I always do when seeing highly-touted Oscar-fodder, but this one really lived up to the hype. When it was over, I said to myself, Now that was a well-made film, which is also what went through my head after Gegen die Wand. But whenever I call Brokeback to mind, a delicate ache goes through my chest of the type I haven't felt in a long time, at least not from a film; something about it is adhering.

I studiously avoided most reviews, critiques, commentaries, and the like having to do with the movie due to fear of spoilers, so if there's anything out there you think I should've read about Brokeback Mountain, please post a link or citation. (Nuphy already sent me Proulx' short story, which I haven't gotten around to reading yet.)

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Which short story was that, by the way? I've read a couple of Proulx's story collections and don't remember anything about gay cowboys (not seen the film yet, hope that's a fair précis..)

Would you believe "Brokeback Mountain"? It was first published in the New Yorker in 1997, as a free-standing book in 1998, and in the collection Close range : Wyoming stories in 1999.

Huh..would you believe I've read Close Range...perhaps it's time to give that one another look..!

According to the table of contents I have in front of me, it's the last story in the collection, so maybe you just didn't read that far...

I really hate to say it, because I feel the movie was well made as well, but I really disliked it. I realize that's a strictly personal opinion, but... damn, couldn't they have shared SOME tenderness without it turning into a fist fight or angry wrestling match? Also. I'm all for sad endings to movies, but to have every single character in the movie end up completely miserable? (except, perhaps, for the daughter) ... And the bloody shirt stowed *in the closet* for the rest of the guy's life just strikes me as a depressing commentary on gay guilt. The message of the movie to me was less about enduring love than it was about the certainty of being smacked down by life for daring to be unconventional.

:) That being said, I do think it's due a few oscars, though I was a MUCH bigger fan of Capote from a cinematic standpoint.

Nuphy was telling me that there's a piece in the New York Review of Books that addresses just these complaints. Apparently the viewpoint of the author--with which Nuphy concurs--is that they stem from the fundamental misapprehension that the movie is about a love story. It isn't; it's fundamentally about the closet, and how it destroys love and happiness.

Nuphy can speak from experience: He was in the closet for over fifty years until he met me. (He's exactly the same age as Jake Gyllenhall's character would be if he'd survived.)

monshu, who's just a few years younger, tells me he's seeing a definitely split in reactions among viewers based on whether they belong to the pre- or post-Stonewall generations. The older gays recognise something from their own experience whereas the younger gays just don't seem to get it.

I think the only reason why I do is that I've spent so much time with older gay men, many of whom only came out in middle age. So although I don't have the direct experience, I've benefitted from theirs, albeit at a bit of remove. Still, I've spent a fair amount of time in my life pondering how it might've turned out had been born earlier or in a different part of the world. One of the questions the movie makes me ask is, Would I have been more like Jack or Ennis?

Also, I disagree that they don't share any tenderness that isn't a fist-fight or wrestling match; I can think of at least two cuddling scenes where this is the case. It's another mistake to expect that two men raised with a very different set of mores than you or I will express affection in exactly the same way as we would. The older men I've dated have never been as comfortable with PDAs as you or I would be--and these are otherwise touchy-feely urbanites, not macho farmers from austere Christian backgrounds. You take one look at Jack's father in the film and you realise he never experienced a single moment of male affection in that household.

Telling points, all. I suppose I can fault the media for turning this movie into a "love story with gay cowboys". I can definitely see a case to be made that this was all about the closet and its effects on gay men of those decades. You're probably right, as well, about men from the post-stonewall period experiencing this differently from those who came after (like me)

If it's any consolation, I did like the Thanksgiving Dinner scene where Jack Twist puts the verbal smack down on his father-in-law. ;P

Yeah, the US media are very geared toward selling pie-in-the-sky romances and not at all equipped to promote tragic love affairs. That's one reason why I try to ignore as much advance publicity as I can before a movie.

One of the nagging questions in my mind is: Why does Loreena marry Jack? He's pretty, okay, but so is she--and she's wealthier and higher status than him. There's some implication that it was a shotgun wedding, but this is never clear--and, even so, it doesn't explain why she keeps him around. Is it just to annoy her father? I only came upon that idea because of that scene you mention; she clearly smirks with satisfaction when Jack tongue-lashes him.

Heh. Mmmmm. tongue-lashing.

*smacks himself* Stop it.

Yeah. There were a lot of subtleties to the movie that were nice. For instance, I did like the part where Ennis finally met Jack's mother. She sensed quite a bit about him and, being a mother, most likely knew all about Jack as well. That was the only part of the movie that brought me even close to dropping a tear or two, when she packed her son's shirt up in a paper grocery back and gave it to Ennis with that look on her face, like she knew what it would mean to him.

Just had to say I love the "groups-of-individuals" comments. :)

As far as Brokeback, I haven't seen it, in part because I figure it can't possible live up to the hype and in part because I so rarely see movies these days that when I do I want to see one with a lot more random property damage.

Although, I am glad they appear to have finally made a movie about a same-sex relationship that appears to all accounts I've heard to be pretty good.

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