Brokeback Mountain
Dec. 27th, 2005 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
logisticsladI saw Brokeback Mountain today. Jake Gyllenhall has gorgeous eyes and Heath Ledger is classically handsome. Their scenes together smolder on the edge of gay porn. These are not roles that up and coming young actors would likely have chosen even 10 years ago. But things have changed and while I did enjoy the acting and the scenery, the story gave me some things to think about... beware of spoilers...
It seemed to be a very realistic depiction of life in the 60's in the American midwest. A time when everyone knew everyone's business, and it was culturally okay to bash or kill people who were different (ie gay people). What struck me was how culturally constructed the two male characters' sexualities were. They both accepted that marrying a woman and having kids was the way to live, and were each quite surprised that it didn't work out that way for either of them. They have no one but each other to talk to about their lives, and because they are such MEN, they don't really do much of that. They hardly ever talked to each other or to their wives about what was happening (and that part, while I suppose was realistic, greatly disturbed me). I felt quite sorry for their wives. They don't use words like "love" to describe what they feel for each other. They try to follow their desire for each other, but have great difficulty balancing it with their lives (and in fact don't succeed, they essentially create a secret fairy-tale space for them to be together). One of them pushes for changing their lives, but the other is unable to overcome his upbringing and change, hence there are tragic consequences. They are functionally bisexual, but are not like bisexual people I know today. Because of the minimal dialog, the film leads the viewer to insert their own experiences and emotion into the characters and so it becomes more personal. However, it feels dated and constrained because of its time period and not directly about the modern audience's own experiences. It's not a gay love story for our times, it's more like a time capsule of how people lived in isolation before there was a gay movement. I think it is worth seeing, and was well executed, but the story has basically been told before (but perhaps not on the Hollywood big screen).
It seemed to be a very realistic depiction of life in the 60's in the American midwest. A time when everyone knew everyone's business, and it was culturally okay to bash or kill people who were different (ie gay people). What struck me was how culturally constructed the two male characters' sexualities were. They both accepted that marrying a woman and having kids was the way to live, and were each quite surprised that it didn't work out that way for either of them. They have no one but each other to talk to about their lives, and because they are such MEN, they don't really do much of that. They hardly ever talked to each other or to their wives about what was happening (and that part, while I suppose was realistic, greatly disturbed me). I felt quite sorry for their wives. They don't use words like "love" to describe what they feel for each other. They try to follow their desire for each other, but have great difficulty balancing it with their lives (and in fact don't succeed, they essentially create a secret fairy-tale space for them to be together). One of them pushes for changing their lives, but the other is unable to overcome his upbringing and change, hence there are tragic consequences. They are functionally bisexual, but are not like bisexual people I know today. Because of the minimal dialog, the film leads the viewer to insert their own experiences and emotion into the characters and so it becomes more personal. However, it feels dated and constrained because of its time period and not directly about the modern audience's own experiences. It's not a gay love story for our times, it's more like a time capsule of how people lived in isolation before there was a gay movement. I think it is worth seeing, and was well executed, but the story has basically been told before (but perhaps not on the Hollywood big screen).
