Going For Brokeback

Once it was decided that my visiting family would be seeing a movie on Christmas Day I was resigned to sitting through The Family Stone or some such, but everyone in my family wanted to see Brokeback Mountain (partly, admittedly, because it was filmed in Alberta. And, of course, Albertan conservatism is kind of a strange brew; when k.d. lang came out it didn’t really seem to cause much of a ripple, but when she came out as a vegetarian…that’s when the sign on her hometown was covered with graffiti.)

The most salient thing about the picture is that it represents the return to form of an immensely gifted director, although (as some have anticipated) Lee’s sensibility certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste. Lee’s rhythms and lovely photography and attention to period detail hit me where I live when he’s on, and this picture works almost as well as the The Ice Storm. I don’t understand claims that the movie is cliched or melodramatic, unless these terms are defined so that they encompass pretty much any movie about problematic romantic relationships. Whether a movie that uses archetypes about thwarted desire and romantic bad faith deserves these labels depends on whether the story feels organic and character-driven, and this one does. And it will also rise and fall on the acting, and while Gyllenhall and (especially) Ledger deserve their hosannas, Williams and Hathaway give the movie a surprising jolt of soul. And, as always, Lee gets consistently good performances across the board, and is especially skilled with teenage and child actors who bring so many other movies to a halt. But while the context of a major Hollywood film matters, it is certainly true that the movie is not really subversive. As Anthony Lane noted, it’s neither particularly gay nor a western–McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show being the obvious antecedent–and nor (may the saints be praised) is it another self-conscious attempt to “demythologize” a genre that has been alleged to have “lost its innocence” almost as frequently as America itself, but I don’t really see that a problem; I don’t see much point in attacking the movie for not being another movie. (And the upside is that it’s not the policy brief in favor of gay marriage or whatever that its anti-aesthetic critics have evaluated it as.)

It’s a very fine movie, and should be seen, but it is certainly flawed. While I can’t go along with the claim that it gives off less erotic heat than a Merhcant/Ivory picture without having seen the latter (I find it hard to believe that it’s even theoretically possible), it’s true that some people will find it too tasteful by half (or maybe by the full one), and I don’t entirely disagree. (Mickey Kaus and his constantly-under-perceived-siege heterosexuality will be happy to know that in the patriarchal tradition of Hollywood there’s more female than male nudity in the film. Perhaps Kaus, who seems to think that attraction to the stars is the only reason to see a movie, can explain why this ratio is so high, and why a majority of the male nudity seems to involve Harvey Keitel.) The scene where Ennis Twist is fired is more explicit than it needs to be–it’s the one lapse where the film tells you what to think instead of dramatizing–and the final twist for Jack Twist does justify the charge of melodrama. Overall, though, I think these are fairly minor quibbles; certainly, it’s one of the best movies of the year.

It should be noted as well that my more politically and aesthetically conservative family liked it as well (which, of course, may hurt my argument more than it helps it, but I stand by it.) They also liked Sweeney Todd, which according to the expanding wave of anti-aesthetic criticism makes us objectively pro-cannibalism as well as pro-homosexuality. (I wonder what Stanley Kurtz thinks is worse?) I’ll have more about it after I see Doubt on Thursday, but despite being a Sondheim skeptic I can’t challenge the consensus about the current production; it’s flat-out masterful…