I’ve put this off long enough. It’s time to go back to Brokeback Mountain.
My love for you is as distressed as this composition
This movie should win whatever Academy Awards it wants to. I didn’t see Munich, but I’ve seen the others, and Brokeback is the only one that made me feel human emotions and stuff. Specifically, the only one that made me sob and snort and cry like I was going to cry myself to death — an experience like unto Big Fish or Return of the King.
The other dudes nominated for best actor are all good and stuff — I mean, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s could play Mr. Potatohead and be chimerical and troubling — but nothing stacks up to Ennis Del Mar. Maybe any one of them in a cowboy hat would have been just as good as Heath Ledger (or maybe not; but, dammit, Capote wasn’t a likeable character, and I didn’t see Walk the Line, and I don’t even know what David Strathairn is doing here, because Good Night and Good Luck was flat as a pancake and his character was all persona and whatever.
Yeah, well, I shtupped Carmela Soprano
But enough of that. It’s time for me to give a thorough tongue bath to the awsomexcellifficence of Brokeback Mountain.
This image couldn’t be more erotically charged if the two horses started humpin`
- The choices aren’t obvious. It would be easy to make Randy Quaid’s Mr. Gray just mean and antagonizing, but then you see he’s mostly mad that Ennis and Jack were horsing around instead of doing their job. So a character that could have been an easy cheat is actually pretty sympathetic.
Similarly, the female roles that could have been shadows have a little swerve on them — Michelle Williams bites back, Ella Enchanted is a firebrand, and I was just so shocked and happy to see Linda Cardellini that I nearly peed. Linda Cardellini! I was not notified. And then Anna Faris shows up! Can we have a movie where they all make out?
When I dance to Linda Ronstadt, you will be aroused - It showed that men having sex with men is the manliest thing ever. You start with men — that’s manly. Then you add sex — incredibly manly. And then you top it with more men! Being gay is not for sissies. The sex scenes are full of such force — even brutality — that it makes tussling with someone not your physical equal seem utterly impotent by comparison. Compare the impact of Ennis and Jack’s post-coital fistfight to the little *dink* on the head he gives Alma when she falls sledding. Yeah, she’s sweet, cute, and dainty — if you’re into that.
And if that doesn’t work for you, compare Jack crouching naked in a creek, beating his laundry with a phallic-ass stick, to Alma scrubbing laundry in a vulvic bucket in the kitchen sink. Are you feeling trapped by the reproductive imperative of heterosexuality? YOU ARE NOW!
Honey, I`m feeling trapped by the reproductive imperative of heterosexuality… - Aside from demonstrating male homosexuality’s physical superiority to heterosexuality, the movie also asserts that it is way funner. The only fun Ennis and Alma have together is the limp-wristed sledding episode, and hot on the heels of that comes Wedding and Children and Divorce Court. In contrast, sex with another man means campfires and horse-roping and the great outdoors (if also, you know, secrecy and social persecution). So, now choose one to spend the next fifty years of your life with. Hmm? Hmmmm?
I dunno if I agree with the soul-sucking pallor that sex with women contracts in this film, but if it weren’t coming across clearly, the film’s funnest female Linda Cardellini delivers the thesis statement: “Girls don’t fall in love with fun.” Which is OMG so harsh, because Ennis did.
If Gen Y’s Robert DeNiro put your hand on his hard-on, you would, too - I shouldn’t leave out that the sex scenes were the hottest thing that ever hotted. Put a thin layer of taboo on top and you got a tasty man sex creme brulée.
- Heath Ledger acted his mighty grumbly taciturn ass off. Also he has conceivably been drunk in his life. His drunk got-to-pee walk was as true and distinctive as Kermit the Frog saying “a-li-ga-tworrrrs,” and that was a non-sequitur but there you go. Plus, the collection of beer bottles that accumulates in front of him as he waits for Jack was super phallic.
Sideburn off! Jack is winning - Ennis takes off with Jack, and Alma calls out to him an errand to remember her by. Oh mah God that is so female. Dudes have to understand, for better or worse, when a woman asks him to do something, 99 out of 100 times it is a test of his love. As in, “if you loved me you would do this, and every moment that you delay, and every ounce of enthusiasm I detect as missing takes away love points.” That is why amount of laundry translates weirdly into amount of sex. Dudes. Prove your love. Do the laundry. In the creek with a stick, if you have to.
Someone solve this problem, please - I heard that some people didn’t like this movie because they couldn’t relate to the central conflict. That is dumb as a bag of hammers. If you can’t relate to this movie, then you have never had parents, or children, or known parents, or known children, or ever had a romantic relationship, or ever interacted with another human being ever. In fact, the thought of it makes me want to give whoever didn’t like this movie a purple nurple right now. When I started crying my guts out in the last act, it was only like 40% for the lost love, maybe 20% for the endless, obstinate devotion, and 40% for isolated single dads hammering out their regrets as they quest for redemption. Are you crying yet? Now! CRY NOW!
- My beefs with the movie are skimpy, and limited to the following. What is up with the weird wigs they kept putting on Anne Hathaway? I`m sure they had meaning and symbolism, but they were really distracting. I think it’s a credit to Anne and her little “hmmphs” that she wasn’t totally upstaged.
This is the least vivid thing I will wear on my head this movieIn other news, I did think it was weird that these dudes are supposed to go on week-long fishing trips — to places that actually have water and fish — and yet Ennis doesn’t fish once. Not once? That seems almost out of character. I know they’re passionate lovers divided forever by society and personal obligation, but how much sex can two people have? You gotta take a smoke break, at least.
Wait, one more — technology has not quite made it to successfully changing a person’s age with makeup. Mostly in this movie, when in doubt, they didn’t try. Sure, Heath got his hairline pushed back, and Jake got a couple of fine lines, but you got to consider these aren’t just aging men — they’re aging cowboy alcoholic smokers. They should have looked like raw canned ass by 40 — and I think their love for each other after they`d lost aesthetics would have doubled the poignancy factor. And the only maturity concession for the women was hairdo. Maybe that explains the Hathaway wig situation. Anyway.
A-a-a-and ka-manly spent.
