Flashback Mountain

[muckefuck]

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.)

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

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.

[shdwpoet.livejournal.com]

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

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

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.

[shdwpoet.livejournal.com]

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.