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Cinema - Brokeback
Mountain
Love stories usually follow a pretty similar plot line. A young
couple fall in love, but the course of that love doesn’t
run smooth. There’s always some stumbling block to them
getting together. It might be war (Casablanca), family feuds
(Romeo and Juliet), the haughtiness of one of the characters
(Pride and Prejudice), or the fact that one of them is a dithering
middle class twit (all Hugh Grant films). In Brokeback Mountain
the problem is the protagonists’ fear of society’s
reaction to their homosexuality. The couple (Heath Ledger and
Jake Gyllenhaal) meet on the eponymous mountain looking after
sheep in 1960’s rural Wyoming, but hell, they wear Stetsons
and ride horses, for which reason it is usually referred to
as ‘that gay cowboy movie’.
The pair deny their true feelings, and do the done thing. They
both marry, both have kids, both lead depressing lives in unhappy
families. In the second half of the film we see them grow older,
occasionally getting together on trysts billed to their wives
as male-bonding fishing trips. Ever wrinklier, they lie in motel
beds talking about what might have been, what never could be.
The eclectic Ang Lee directs, and of course his latest film
is a visual feast, which won him the best director Oscar. Its
moral is simple: obey your true nature. Towards the end of its
133 minutes you start wishing it had served you a little more
moral ambiguity to chew over. DL |
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Oscar Bravo: if it ain’t Brokeback, don’t fix it |
