BlueWizard goes to the movies: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN and KING KONG- Page 2

[RobbO]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 12:22pm

jack has other opportunites for sex as is pointed out in the movie but he loves ennis and that's why he is drawn to him "like a force of nature."

[SonofMammaMiaSam]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 12:23pm

The movie has beautiful moments of deep shared love. It has MORE moments of fear, confusion, isolation, and hatred. I don't see it as a love story.

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:26pm

There's a great interview with Annie Proulx in the Miami Herald:

Q: You've said Brokeback Mountain began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.
A: Everything I write has a rural situation and the Wyoming stories, in the collection Close Range, which includes Brokeback Mountain, did contain a number of those social-observation stories, what things are like for people there. It's my subject matter, what can I say.

Q: Were you trying to accomplish something specific with this story?
A: No. It was just another story when I started writing it. I had no idea it was going to even end up on the screen. I didn't even think it was going to be published when I was first working on it because the subject matter was not in the usual ruts in the literary road.

Q: You've said this story took twice as long to write as a novel. Why?
A: Because I had to imagine my way into the minds of two uneducated, rough-spoken, uninformed young men, and that takes some doing if you happen to be an elderly female person. I spent a great deal of time thinking about each character and the balance of the story, working it out, trying to do it in a fair kind of way.

[...]

Q: Would you characterize the story as groundbreaking?
A: I hope that it is going to start conversations and discussions, that it's going to awaken in people an empathy for diversity, for each other and the larger world. I'm really hoping that the idea of tolerance will come through discussions about the film. People tend to walk out of the theater with a sense of compassion, which I think is very fine. It is a love story. It has been called both universal and specific and I think that's true. It's an old, old story. We've heard this story a million times, we just haven't heard it quite with this cast.

Q: Have you gotten any response from gay organizations?
A: No. When the story was first published eight years ago, I did expect that. But there was a deafening silence. What I had instead were letters from individuals, gay people, some of them absolutely heartbreaking. And over the years, those letters have continued and certainly are continuing now. Some of them are extremely fine, people who write and say, 'This is my story. This is why I left Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa.' Perhaps the most touching ones are from fathers, who say, 'Now I understand the kind of hell my son went through.' It's enormously wonderful to know that you've touched people, that you've truly moved them.

Q: Is that why you write?
A: It's not why I write. I had no idea I was going to get any response of this sort. I wrote it from my long-term stance of trying to describe sections of rural life, individuals in particular rural situations and places, well, first the places. That it came out this way it just happened to touch certain nerves in people. I think this country is hungry for this story.

[...]
Author discusses origins of `Brokeback Mountain'

[RobbO]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:30pm

just because it's sad and their love is unfufilled does not make it any less of a love story. hell, have you seen "love story."

it's certainly not a feelgood love story for the ages but a tale of tortured love and opportunities missed.

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:34pm

I've always called it a love story. Obviously, it's a story about two people in love.

Updated On: 12/20/05 at 02:34 PM

[SonofMammaMiaSam]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:34pm

I didn't say their relationship wasn't a love story. I said I don't view the film in total as a love story. There is a difference. I view the film as a tragedy.

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:38pm

But love stories can be tragic. (Hell, aren't all the good ones tragic? My brooding sensibility....)

In other news, Ang Lee is being awarded the Human Rights Campaign Equality Award. Well deserved, considering both his gay-related films (BROKEBACK and THE WEDDING BANQUET) are intelligently made and resist from stereotypes and soapboxing.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN DIRECTOR ANG LEE TO ACCEPT HRC AWARD

Updated On: 12/20/05 at 02:38 PM

[RobbO]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:40pm

it's a tragic love story.

[SonofMammaMiaSam]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:46pm

I'd have preferred to see a film made about people like Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny who weren't afraid to be gay when they marched at Indepencence Hall on July 4, 1965. Show me their love stories. No fear or cowardice there.

[RobbO]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:47pm

every story deserves to be told. someday maybe theirs will be told also.

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:48pm

Doomed love affairs are much more interesting to watch than successful ones. I'm hard-pressed to think of any movie couple, straight or gay, who were consistently happy with each other and still made a really strong impact on me.

Updated On: 12/20/05 at 02:48 PM

[RobbO]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:52pm

true. a great example is in the film/play "the sum of us" when the character's grandmother is literally torn from the arms of her lover after decades together. it's heartwrenching but still a very poignant love story for the masses.

[DG]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:53pm

Blue - I don't necessarily need them to be consistently happy - life's not like that - but I DO prefer to end on a note of happiness or hope.

I would choose to watch Maurice or Beautiful Thing any day over something like this.

[SonofMammaMiaSam]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:54pm

Not a single person in this story has a happy life in the end. That's very sad, and tragic. I guess love doesn't conquer all.
Updated On: 12/20/05 at 02:54 PM

[RobbO]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 2:59pm

junior has a happy life.

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 3:27pm

Much as I love MAURICE, its ending is notoriously unrealistic: Maurice and Alec can't stay in the green world of their romance forever, and I really don't see that relationship surviving.

I found BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN did end on a hopeful note: Ennis chooses life for once, by forgoing work to be at his daughter's wedding. If anything, his relationship with Jack taught him that happiness is just going to pass him by unless he takes the reams of what's left of his years.

[DG]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 4:38pm

Blue - interestingly, I've just been reading about Mr. Forster's book "Maurice". It seems that his inspiration for the 'happy ending' came from a visit to the poet Edward Carpenter (a 'gentleman') and his partner, who was a working-class man from Derbyshire named George Merrill. He saw in them the possibilities that could exist from the rejection of societal constraint.

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 4:59pm

Hmmm, I hadn't thought about that. I knew Forster was good friends with Edward Carpenter (it was spending time with him that Forster became conscious of his own sexuality), and I knew about Carpenter's life partner, but I didn't realize that their relationship was the inspiration for Maurice and Alec.

I've been thinking, though, whether stories with a positive ending, where loose ends are tied and everyone comes out relatively unscathed -- "comedies" in the classical sense -- can truly provoke change in society. Comedies are structured in such a way as to reinforce the basic status quo; any deviations are done for fun and frolic, but the society's values are by-and-large reaffirmed. Tragedy, on the other hand, shows the collapse of a society or an individual, and demands that we examine how (and if) such disintegration could be prevented.

This is, admittedly, a simplistic way of viewing comedy and tragedy (and there are major exceptions, like ANGELS IN AMERICA); but in the context of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, it's the utter loss depicted in the movie that forces its audiences to think about how such tragedy applies to our own culture.

I don't know if BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is the best movie of the year, but surely it's the most important, in that it has the best chance at influencing the opinion of millions of Americans in a way a happier story wouldn't be able to do.

Updated On: 12/20/05 at 04:59 PM

[DG]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 5:06pm

Simplistic though it may be, I think you're right about the influential possibilities of 'tragedy' versus 'comedy'. My comments, though, have been about what I personally resonate with, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what may work for or be needed by the general public.

One other thing, I'm not sure I would so easily classify BROKEBACK as the most important movie of the year. By your own standards, MUNICH may prove to do exactly what you're talking about (and I know from another thread that you haven't seen it yet, but are about to.)

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 5:09pm

I was thinking about MUNICH, too; but the numerous reviews I've read (both good and bad) have said that the film doesn't offer any new insight into the Middle East conflict. The closest thing to a message the movie seems to offer is that violence begets violence, and peace cannot be achieved through arms; hardly revelations.

Maybe I'm a cynic, but I don't think MUNICH can or will contribute much to our understanding of the Middle East. Spielberg is calling his film a "prayer for peace" -- as if that ideal has never dawned on politicians in the past few decades. The conflict has lasted so long, I don't think anything remotely resembling a solution will come in the form of a Steven Spielberg thriller, even with Kushner in tow.

Updated On: 12/20/05 at 05:09 PM

[DG]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 5:14pm

Blue - unfortuantely, I think it might be news to some people

One would think that the message inherrent in BROKEBACK would be obvious and self-evident. However . . .

[JailyardGuy]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 5:14pm

How quickly we forget that love stories need not be cheerful to be love stories...




Anybody recall a tiny little tale that goes by the name of "Romeo and Juliet"?

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 5:16pm

It's always been my unpopular opinion that ROMEO AND JULIET is a comedy gone wrong....

[DG]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 5:17pm

Oh, yeah Jaily - wasn't that that wicked movie that Baz Luhrman wrote?

[JailyardGuy]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 5:20pm

lol, yes, that's the one! (What is WITH Baz and the tragic love stories, btw?)