Despite a few perfectly reasonable fears, Martine and I went to see Brokeback Mountain on Saturday night. OK, forget the Larry David reference; my only real fear was that the movie would be one of those earnest "topical" films that are all booming music and Spielbergesque ham-fisted poignancy. I’m happy to report that it was nothing like that. In fact, it was very well made and I really enjoyed it.
The setting was absolutely gorgeous (incidentally, those stunning vistas are actually in Alberta, Canada, where the film was shot, and not Wyoming, where it was set). Ang Lee gives us several gorgeous iconic cowboy images, but he never over-does it. And the story, while somewhat predictable if you’ve seen the trailer, turns out to be more complicated and involving than you may have lead yourself to believe.
The strangest thing for me was the number of sight and situation gags in the film — many of which were very subtle and might have escaped many viewers. On the other hand, they may be of the sort that brings a Stanley Kubrick anecdote to mind: a film reviewer had asked him about a scene in Full Metal Jacket in which a structure in the background was reminiscent of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The reviewer asked about its significance in the current film. Kubrick just shrugged and said "I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve noticed it."
So perhaps the clever gags that I noticed were unintentional. I’ll mention one below, and you can be the judge. But before you continue, see this:
SPOILER ALERT!
IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM YOU MAY WANT TO STOP READING NOW!
Something I found quite clever about the film is that the director clearly knew the audience would be on the alert for the first sign of attraction between the two cowboys. To be precise, we’d be on hyper-alert. As such, he directed a number of scenes in a very intelligent way, designed to keep up that level of suspense without quite giving us the payoff. For example, in one scene, long after the men have established their work routine, you see one of them get undressed in the background. He squats down and begins washing himself using a bucket of water and some soap (it is not an explicit scene — you see the character in profile, and out of focus). He soaps down his armpits, and then his naughty bits (which are hidden by his leg. Calm down for Pete’s sake!).
If this were a Spielberg film, the cowboy in the foreground would have turned his head at just the right moment and he would have cast a long and doe-eyed look at his naked companion. Not so Ang Lee. Instead, as the guy in the background washes and rinses, the guy in the foreground just pokes away at the fire and is oblivious to his friend’s nakedness. Ang Lee understands the concept of waiting for the shoe to drop.
Then there was the following subtle gag, which may be of the Kubrick variety described above. When Jack Twist goes back to Joe Aguirre (the Randy Quaid character) looking for work a year after the fateful summer, Aquirre says "Twist, you guys wasn’t gettin paid to leave the dogs baby-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose."
I’ve never heard the expression "stem the rose" before, but it’s pretty clear what he’s referring to. In the meantime, we’ve seen quite a few scenes in which the guys are sitting around the campfire sipping whiskey out of an unlabeled glass bottle. Fast-forward almost 20 years, and we see the guys once again sitting around the camp fire on one of their "fishing trips." At this point they’re getting older and in this particular scene they’re not getting along so well. We’ve seen that their lives have diverged in many ways. Jack takes a sip of whiskey, and for once the bottle has a label on it: "Old Rose." HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!
On the other hand, there was one thing (and only one thing) in the movie that did not ring true for me. Towards the end, Innes’s ex-wife tells him that she knew he didn’t go up to Brokeback Mountain to go fishing because she had left a note in his tackle box and when he came back the note was still there, undisturbed — indicating that he had never even opened the tackle box.
But here’s the thing — these guys are Wyoming cowboys. I don’t care how gay they are or how much buggering they got up to on their "fishing trips." No cowboy — gay, straight, or transgendered — could go into a landscape like that with a fishing pole and not go fishing. It just couldn’t happen. It’s like locking a couple of lesbians inside a chocolate factory and expecting them to never look around and try a few samples.
Other than that it was a fine film about oppression and repression, desire, loneliness, complicated relationships, and personal human struggles. Highly recommended.