Brokeback Mountain won and it just seemed so ordinary- Page 7

[robbiej]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 12:04am

CAN'T YOU PEOPLE JUST LET ME GO TO SLEEP???

OK...in the shorthand version, I stick with the person who called this film a Rorshach (SP???) test. Your definition of love and mine are different...for whatever reason. So what you see and what I see on the screen are different. Neither is right or wrong. But we can't ignore the fact that our experiences create a circumstance where we can project many (I believe too many) of our own feelings and prejudices.

As for point number 2, it's an argument that jerby has made (one to which I mostly agree). All art has some specific point of view on the world, hence...all art is political.

And now sweet slumber awaits me!

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 12:11am

1-Indeed, people view love differently. Just saying for me it's a darker, scarier, and more emotionally turbulent concept. I don't see how it couldn't be for anyone. Is love ever uncomplicated except in bad movies?

2. Ah, well, duh. Just sayin' that a statement like "ALL ART IS POLITICAL" in all caps is opening a can of worms.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 12:12am

"Shorthand version"? WHO ARE YOU KIDDING?

Robbie, honey, sweetie, you've been posting the SAME goddamn POST over and over and over and over again for three *****ng weeks. The movie's a hit--and a cultural phenomenon.

MOVE ON! LET GO! AND SHUT THE F******************CK UP ALREADY! WE KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW IT DISAPPOINTED YOU! NO ONE CAAAAAAAAAAARES!

Go pick on another movie already. Something your own size. Like "Cheaper by the Dozen 2."

Updated On: 1/18/06 at 12:12 AM

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 12:17am

Actually, I suggest Casanova. It has a very safe illustration of love in the world, and is mildly titillating by certain standards. Also, one liners. Everyone loves one liners. And you still get Heath Ledger for your bucks.

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 12:27am

....and Namo disappears when I call him on his flagrant accusations regarding Ang Lee's socio-politics. Namo, you can't throw around a description like "fundamentally conservative" without anything to back it up. To borrow Stephen Colbert's term, you're pulling a truthism.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 12:36am

So, I just signed on and it appears I've missed quite a bit.

Updated On: 1/18/06 at 12:36 AM

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 12:46am

And yet, Namo, you clearly care enough to post such angry posts at me. I think you really do care about me! I'm touched, baby.

roninjoey, I like Love Actually. I think it would have been great if it had had a gay storyline (and **SPOILER**they do have a fake you out one with Keira's love triangle), but it doesn't bother me that they didn't in the final cut.

It would be nice to see more ensemble pieces like that film that do include various relationships and how these relationships bounce off of each other.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 12:52am

Jerby, I agree. 'Love, Actually' is quite enjoyable. :)

[Luscious]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 1:39am

PalJoey... you slay me!!! That was the best laugh I've had in weeks.

And Namo... other than for your musings here on the board, I admit, I don't know you from Adam. But, for your sake, and the sake of everyone else in your life, I certainly hope that the personality traits that you exhibit here are mostly the personification of an online alter ego that you've created for yourself, because I've got to tell you, you come off as one obstinate, immature, mean-spirited, vindictive, ass****. A few days ago, in the infamous Bareback thread, I replied to one of your posts by stating that I've been in a loving relationship with the same man for the past 17 years, and hoped that you could say the same some day. In you inimitable style you replied, "How do you know I can't say it now, dickwad?" My answer to you then should have been, because I can't imagine anyone enduring 17 minutes in your company, let alone 17 years. I sincerely hope it's all an act. And if it is, maybe it's time you got a new one.

Updated On: 1/18/06 at 01:39 AM

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 2:49am

I love Love, Actually. The bit where the two who can't communicate because they speak different languages are telling each other how much they love each other just makes me cry thinking about it.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 2:51am

Laura Linney, GODDESS, breaks my heart in that film.

[Peter]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 3:21am

Some here are complaining that BBM is a straight guys take on a gay relationship. Others complain that they didnt feel the romance. I have a different take on the film.

As a 47 year old gay male, I, along with most other gay males here I'd guess, have been brought up on a steady diet of straight film romances where Ive been brainwashed and manipulated by formulaic devices used to build tension followed by a big payoff of unbridled passion and romance. I ate it all up and like many others got swept away in the romance..even though Im gay. In the straight films that worked, couples look at each other googleyed, professing their love with torrents of pretty prose. Check out any soap opera in the afternoon..it too follows the same formula. We come to expect certain things from our films and I believe that entered into peoples expectations of BBM because we have been manipulated our entire lives by straight romances.And many people feel somehow better if they shed more than a few tears in the end.

Would this device work in BBM? Absolutely not! Theres very little in the way of sentimentality here, very little sap and no over the top emotional breakdown in the end. Ennis barely even sheds a tear after Jack dies. Theres no overly dramatic throwing of the ashes on the mountain..yet the emotion comes across as real and IN CHARACTER. Compare this to any straight film...any chick flick. BBM doesnt follow this "straight" formulaic device. Therefore, it makes some of us uncomfortable, because we're so used to straight romances where emotions are worn on the sleeves, and theres a big payoff in the end. There is romance in BBM, but it is fitting to the story and character. Ennis is a macho, repressed, closeted gay cowboy. How out of character would it be for him to suddenly burst into vows of love and longing.

Under this current Administration, where the election hinged on a morality war in response to the gay marriage issue, Im honestly expecting some kind of backlash. However, Id have to say that my initial impressions of the films acceptance by mainstream society has been very impressive. I saw the film twice in conservative Orange county CA..Not only was it sold out both times with the majority of the audience straight couples, but there was a scattering of applause at the end. As I left the theater, I thought how finally a straight audience is being caught up in a gay romance in the same way that I was caught up in straight romances all my life. And on the films own terms too! Thats the most revolutionary aspect of the film to me, and perhaps the first step toward changing peoples opinions. For once, we have a common ground. To expect any more than that from this or any film would be ridiculous IMO.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 9:22am

"OK...in the shorthand version, I stick with the person who called this film a Rorshach (SP???) test."

That was me who said that. And I stand by it. And I maintain that people who saw so much in BM that was not on the screen need to be shown that that is what's going on there. Yes, it's a phenomenon, PalJoey. And good on the folks who managed to create something with enough blanks that it can serve as a cinematic MadLibs and be about just about anything people need it to be about.

And BW, I went to bed. Since The Ice Storm I have felt acutely aware that Lee's films are nothing but a reinforcement of basic Hollywood strictures. That movie was such a repressive pendulum swing against the liberation movements of the '60s, it was maddening. And yes, I know it was a novel. And yes, I believe Lee's choices of subject matter are a reason I think he basically wants to reiterate the same old stuff. Like, for instance, gay guys being miserable and doomed.

Do I think a few minutes of rough-housing and pseudo s/m somehow mitigate that? Not particularly. William Friedkin covered that area with much more heat in Cruising, frankly.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 9:23am

From Salon.com:

Broadsheet crush of the day: a fella with the whimsical handle "thebeesucksass," whose recent IMDB post (reg. req'd) about Brokeback Mountain was unearthed at Daily Kos.

"If the film we wanted to see hadn't been sold out, I don't think I'd ever have seen it," he writes. "It's been four days...and progressively, day after day, I have been forced to admit that I am ashamed of the way I felt about homosexuals. I literally had no concept of what life is truly like for these individuals, and must continue to be. In my heart I know that good, wholesome, long-standing friends of mine -- true-believing Christians -- have made life horrible for these people when they go out of their way to bad mouth them behind their backs...tell their children homosexuals are going to Hell, etc.

"I can't explain what I'm feeling, but I haven't had this kind of doubt (about the church I go to) since I made the decision a long, long time ago to leave the family business against my father's wishes...In a way, I guess, my own personal history and my relationship with a disapproving (and uneducated) father somehow made me 'get' what Heath Ledger's character goes through...The God I believe in, that I teach my kids to trust, would never wish the kind of pain that I went through on anyone, which really I now know for real, is the same kind of pain homosexuals must go through just to live what for them is an honest life, and the choice they must make. I'd never had my eyes opened to this before, not ONE IOTA.

"Tonight, winding down, I said a little prayer. It was more or less the same thing that's been going round and round inside my head since I saw this movie... who am I to judge? I honestly was trembling at one point during the credits before we got up to leave, and I had to struggle to re-gain my composure. Now that I am remembering that, it reminds me of the way I trembled when I first asked God to forgive me of my sins and accept me as I am.

"'Brokeback Mountain' humbled me."

He's also got a follow-up post here. ("My wife's youngest brother said something about the movie as a joke and everybody else chuckled along like you'd expect. I'd already decided what I was going to do if anybody mentioned it, and I said, 'I saw it when I was in Texas. And you know, it was damn good.' They all shut up, and it was pretty quiet for a while.)

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 9:35am

"...and hoped that you could say the same some day."

Luscious, your presumption proved my conclusion of your dickwadhood. The day I take pointers from you is the day I slash my wrists.

[Luscious]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:13am

Yes. I'll agree. It was somewhat presumptuous of me, and for that I apologize. It was not my intention to be mean-spirited or sarcastic. Sorry if that's how you interpreted it. But must you always resort to name-calling?

Updated On: 1/18/06 at 10:13 AM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:13am

Peter, the other internecine bitch-slappers (and believe me, I'm a card carrying member) seemed to have ignored it, but I loved your post here. Much appreciated insight about the film's avoidance of soap opera. I've copied it and sent it to a friend in fact.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:19am

I will NOT sit here and let anybody belittle soap opera, missy. Soap operas were "brave" before "brave" was cool.

"But must you always resort to name-calling?"

No I mustn't. Only when people are dickwads.

[Luscious]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:22am

You're a lost cause.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:32am

Oh Namo, I wouldn't be alive without soap operas, literally, for reasons I dare not go into here ... but it's a thrill when standard-issue soap shorthand (and let's remember LOST and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, along with DAYS OF OUR LIVES) is avoided. Characters who don't speak their own subtext. Emotional crescendos not telegraphed. Exclamation-free dialogue. And I'm one hack who cannot live without his exclamation points!!!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:38am

Isn't it interesting...some "sophisticated" gays see the message of BBM as "All gays are miserable and doomed," yet heterosexuals see the movie as saying "Gays fall in love like we do."

And the Christian Right sees it as downright subversive.

Here's how Annie Proulx dramatizes the "love" that the Sophisticated Gays find disappointing and nonexistent in the movie. (Perhaps it exists only in the story.) This is from the scene just before they have sex for the first time, so it represents their affection, not spit-and-slick lust:

"They were respectful of each other's opinions, each glad to have a companion where none had been expected. Ennis, riding against the wind back to the sheep in the treacherous, drunken light, thought he'd never had such a good time, felt he could paw the white out of the moon."

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:41am

please, the christian right sees spongebob and harry potter as subversive.

[robbiej]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:45am

PalJoey,

Just so you know...the particular post you were quoting was a direct response to Roninjoey asking specific questions about previous posts...hence the "shorthand". I'm fully aware that I've reiterated points. But if reiterating points is going to be the cardinal sin here, you'd be enjoying a nice two-room suite in the fires of hell.

Is it a phenomenon? Sure. Are people talking? Yup. Is that a good thing? Absolutely. But I'm supposed to temper what and how I feel about the film because...why? Because it doesn't go with the party line? Because it doesn't validate...what? Your sense of self...your gayness...whatever? If you think that I'd do that, you know nothing of me as a man or as an artist.

I've been nothing but respectful to you and other people here who have been making the same freaking points over and over again...sometimes contradicting themselves...sometimes points that are entirely asinine. Exhibitions in stupidity and the worst form of group-think. And yet, I've been restrained and reasoned...and have kept my considerable humor and wits about me. And this is the response I get?

You want the gloves to come off? Really and truly? Fine.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:54am

Oh, Robbie--you know every time I see you, I feel like. like Ennis, that I too could "paw the white out of the moon."

xoxox, yr PalJoey

[robbiej]

Posted: 1/18/06 at 10:56am

That's not gonna work.