Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter & Peter Chattaway on "Brokeback Mountain." (Well, no, they’re not really ON Brokeback Mountain.)

Last updated on: November 10, 2012 at 9:05 pm by Jeffrey Overstreet

Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter & Peter Chattaway on "Brokeback Mountain." (Well, no, they’re not really ON Brokeback Mountain.) 2012-11-10T21:05:49-07:00 Jeffrey Overstreet

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Two worthwhile perspectives on Brokeback Mountain:

Stephen Hunter sees the film very clearly:

… a movie is a collection of images, not just words. What is said is secondary to the imagery — images, in the hands of a skillful filmmaker, such as the great Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is his most well-known, “Eat Drink Man Woman” his best), are ideas. They carry ideas. They issue proclamations. They lobby for policy.

And what do Lee’s images tell us?

…

It’s hard to argue that the movie constitutes any kind of threat, or pro-gay propaganda. For one thing, there’s too much authentic pain in it, it’s too bloody sad. The final image of the aloneness of the survivor is heartbreaking. He was never a crier, of course, but you know inside he’s sobbing. The film shows, convincingly, that love comes from the heart, not the glands, and if the heart is engaged, the body follows.
…

Yet it makes an argument with images craftily employed to communicate ideas. Nothing in it is arbitrary.

For example, one merely has to compare the visual motifs by which director Lee expresses homosexual life vs. heterosexual life.

Homosexuality in “Brokeback Mountain” is always associated with a river: It’s a great torrent of nature, which cannot be controlled and which provides sustenance, nurture, satisfaction, joy. The happiest image in the film, and the most poignant, is Ennis and Jack, off by their lonesome, pulling off their clothes and leaping off a cliff into the placid, welcoming waters below.

Realistically, it’s a river; metaphorically, it’s the great river of homosexuality, and safe and free immersion in it is utterly joyful to them. Indeed, most of the two men’s squabbling and (mostly off-camera) lovemaking takes place next to a river. It’s glimpsed in many of the backgrounds, usually a turmoil of frothing white water to signify the rush and power of their love and lust for each other. Sometimes it’s calming, it’s always there for them, and they suffer at their imposed distance from it.

Contrast that with the imagery of family and hearth. These venues are expressions of the impoverishment of the heterosexual family lifestyle. Ennis lives in a shabby apartment where he is regularly assailed by his doughy, clueless wife (Oscar-nominated Michelle Williams). His children squall and make demands that he cannot satisfy; his wife clings and resents; we are pressed to identify with him and feel the pain he feels and the yearning he aches with as he lurches out to the “purity” of the river.

The same is true for Jack. His family is equally dysfunctional, fronted by a bully and braggart of a father-in-law who sells farm equipment in Texas. His wife, Lurlene (Anne Hathaway), is first glimpsed as an impossibly pretty young rodeo rider, but after the marriage she ages gracelessly into a chain-smoking harridan with big blond hair and bad teeth.

Then there’s Ennis’s visit to Jack’s parents at the family homestead, which might be called “Ennis calls on Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic.’ ” Old Ang Lee is really laying it on thick here. The actor chosen to play Jack’s father (Peter McRobbie) certainly looks like Wood’s living cadavers — grim, wheezing skinhead, lacking only that pitchfork — and the house itself has the quality of skeleton to it: bare with unfinished wood, rotting in the sun. Again the visuals are overwhelming in their attitude: family life, home life, breeder life as a gestalt of impoverishment and stark, comfortless angularity. The old man cares less about his son’s life than his death; his one issue is that the boy’s ashes not be scattered on Brokeback Mountain, as Jack had wished, but that he be buried in the family plot, that he be hypocritically reclaimed for something called the name of decency.

In fact, generally, the movie is cruel to family. It seems to think family is a bourgeois delusion; Ennis’s poor daughter ends up in a gaudy Trans Am owned by her fiance, a harbinger of roughneck disaster to come. Jack’s boy is simply forgotten about; his ultimate pain — and it will be considerable — is not commented upon.

The movie also misses the deepest joy of family, which is that sense of connection to the great wheel of life. Giving birth to, educating and loving a kid are among the profound joys of human existence. “Brokeback Mountain” cannot begin to imagine such a thing; that reality simply is not on its radar, and if you looked at the story from another vantage — the children’s — it would be a different tale altogether: about greedy, selfish, undisciplined homosexuals who took out a contract in the heterosexual world, and abandoned it. They weren’t true men; they failed at the man’s one sacred duty on Earth, which is to provide.

And, insightful as usual, Peter Chattaway:

…it is even possible to think that Ennis became involved with Jack because he found himself becoming intimate with a friend, and he confused this with sexual intimacy. In some ways, their sexuality is implicitly tied to their adolescent desire to stay buddies and avoid growing up, and it is certainly tied to their irresponsible treatment of their families. The film particularly underscores how Ennis’s wife Alma (Michelle Williams) is traumatized when she discovers her husband’s affair and cannot find a way to get him to talk about it.

Previous Post

February 2, 2006

IT'S DONE. IT'S IN.

Next Post

February 2, 2006 Coen Brothers news!! Is your "Lost" theory better than this one? Lark News!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Blog Bloggers on "Through a Screen Darkly" Browser Coming Soon Endorsements Fiction Books Film Forum Film Reviews Inspirations Interviews Journal Kindlings Muse Movie buzz Music Reviews Non-Fiction Books radio Reviewers on "Through a Screen Darkly" The Auralia Thread Through a Screen Darkly Through a Screen Darkly - Bonus Materials Top 10 (or 20 or 100) lists Uncategorized

Select a Month June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 July 2003 May 2003 March 2003 September 1999

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who saw the Lord high and lifted up, with the train of his robe filling the temple?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Ezekiel Jeremiah Daniel Isaiah