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The Cowboy Who Went Up A Mountain And Came Down A Gay Man

  
  

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Ganesh
21:51 / 04.01.06
I don't think Ennis and Jack were spun to appeal to a straight audience so much as they weren't spun to appeal to a gay audience (other than being played by actors substantially prettier than the characters in Proulx's story). Lee's remained absolutely faithful to the original.
 
 
Ganesh
23:22 / 06.01.06
Saw it a second time this evening. I was a little afraid that it wouldn't pack the same punch. It did but, seeing the fist-in-your-chest moments coming and being generally more attuned to the rhythm of the film, I felt I took in more detail of the secondary performances - particularly Cassie and Ma Twist, both of whom I found even more moving this time around. Much more aware of the soundtrack, particularly the swelling of the refrain towards the end.

The same feeling, on leaving the cinema. Ish. Not qui-i-ite the same hour of being on the verge of tears, but a feeling of... stillness. Almost a downer, but not a downer. Wanting the images to stay for a while, not wanting to shake them loose too soon.
 
 
Ganesh
00:27 / 07.01.06
Missed your comments earlier, Mme LaBombe.

Ganesh I can't remember if I laughed or not when Alma saw Jack and Ennis but if I did it was purely out of an "Omigod what's gonna happen now??!?" sort of reaction. I suspect that's why many laughed.

Yeah, I think you're probably right. We saw it tonight with a very visibly gay audience and, if anything, the nervous laugh at that point was louder. It is a pretty OMFG!!1! moment.

One thing that struck me about this film was the rigidity of the gender roles in that time/culture and how that caused a great deal of pain for both the men and the women in that film.

Y'mean in terms of 'a man ought to support his family'? Both Ennis and Jack were a bit crap at that, although Ennis appears to maintain a good relationship with at least one of his daughters. I'd have been interested to know how Jack's rather distant relationship with his son developed before his death, whether the unhappy father/son dynamic ran another cycle.

As a straight I left the film feeling keenly aware of a depiction in this film of the pain of being in love in a time and a place in which you were unable to freely express this. Yet I also felt maybe white heteronormative guilt that caused me to distrust my feelings ie I will never actually know "what it's like." I still had great sympathy for the characters.

I think that, while gay people are likely to identify particularly keenly with certain situations in Brokeback Mountain, the film's universality was such that nothing was thematically exclusive. It's about life's hardships, and the meagreness of compromise.

And I think it's interesting that one of the things the american right wing press is saying about this film is that it is a 'propaganda' film. This is surely because it IS on many levels a universal love story - and I don't know how someone who is against 'gay marriage' can watch this and not at least question their stance (though I doubt very highly they would change their beliefs).

Agreed. I think it's being argued that the universality of themes - love, longing, loss - in itself constitutes propaganda, because Brokeback Mountain encourages identification with individuals in a same-sex relationship. The fact that it also encourages sympathetic identification with those whose lives have arguably been blighted by fall-out from that same-sex relationship (Alma, Ennis's daughters, Ma Twist, Cassie, probably Lureen) is, IMHO, what prevents it from being simple, one-angle propaganda.

I think the fear of emotional identification/stance-questioning is being reflected by the faintly bizarre phenomenon of threads on Christian forums devoted to the film yet almost entirely populated by individuals proudly declaring their reasons for not going to see it.
 
 
Ganesh
15:41 / 07.01.06
Um... wow.

(With thanks to TMO's Vikram.)
 
 
Loomis
20:24 / 07.01.06
I don't have too much to add that hasn't been said, but I loved it.

Interesting article about the oscar buzz around the film.

"There are half a dozen other big name actors playing gay roles this season, and it's evidently now a safe career move. It's worth noting, however, that none of these actors themselves is gay, and indeed most of them have been at some pains to distance themselves from any such suggestion.

. . . . .

"The way Hollywood is rushing to reward heterosexual actors playing gay roles does not, really, reflect very well on its engagement. It is just too much like its fairly disgraceful engagement with mental and physical disability, and too much like rewarding a variety turn.

. . . . .

"Hollywood will only seem truly tolerant when it allows gay actors to play gay roles, kissing included, and no whining about it in the publicity afterwards. Until then there's - how should one put it - a slight air of Al Jolson about the whole business."
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:13 / 07.01.06
Is it as good as The Hulk, though?
 
 
Ganesh
23:16 / 07.01.06
Bet Lee's not yet tired of hearing that one.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
23:28 / 07.01.06
The Hulk was great and all but, I now realise, it lacked sheep. Injured baby sheep being nursed back to health on horseback by Heath and Jake. *Aw*
 
 
Ganesh
23:32 / 07.01.06
Heath Ledger, interviewed in the recent Attitude, was actually refreshingly 'non-Hollywood' in response to the standard What Was It Like Kissing A Man? line of questioning:

"Look, I totally understand why this is an issue, why people are interested in me and Jake kissing. It is just interesting, because it is. And do you know what? On set we couldn't have been more 'whatever' about it. We had to represent the characters' intense passion and to a certain extent that means you have to get passionate about it. Fuck it. What we're talking about is kissing another human being. There are, like, millions of worse things that I can think of doing in my life than kissing Jake."

On the standard Effect On Your Career question:

"The effects of playing gay? I have nothing at stake from those things. If it was in fact surrounded by risk then that risk would probably make me want to do the part more. If I never get another part in another movie after doing Brokeback Mountain because I chose to play a gay character in it, then fuck Hollywood. Fuck it, you know? Basically, I do not want to be part of an industry that doesn't give people roles because they chose to play a gay character. I just don't."

On the ending:

"When the film ended it genuinely shocked me. I was proud for probably the first time in my entire career."
 
 
FinderWolf
22:11 / 08.01.06
I haven't seen the movie yet, been intending to, but check out this bizarre take on it from critic Gene Shallit: (I love how GLAAD smacks down his twisted logic in this story with the Titanic analogy)

>> GLAAD Mad at Shalit's "Brokeback" Breakdown
Friday January 6 7:44 PM ET

For the most part, the critics agree that Brokeback Mountain is one of the year's most commendable films.

Then there's Gene Shalit's point of view.

The veteran Today show critic has been taken to task by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation over his negative review of the gay cowboy western, in which he referred to Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Jack, as a "sexual predator" who "tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts."

The group claimed that Shalit's statements, delivered during his "Critic's Choice" segment on Thursday's Today show, promoted "defamatory anti-gay prejudice to a national audience," and criticized NBC News for providing the eccentric critic with a platform from which to air his views.

"Shalit's bizarre characterization of Jack as a 'predator' and Ennis (Heath Ledger) as a victim reflects a fundamental lack of understanding about the central relationship in the film and about gay relationships in general," GLAAD said in a statement. "It seems highly doubtful that Shalit would similarly claim that Titanic's Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) was a 'sexual predator' because he was pursuing a romantic relationship with Rose (Kate Winslet)."

GLAAD demanded an apology from both Shalit and NBC News and urged supporters to contact the network and complain.

In addition to offering his searing analysis of the romantic relationship between the lead characters, Shalit commended Ledger's performance in Brokeback and allowed that the film had a "few dramatic peaks." He concluded that Ang Lee's much-nominated oeuvre was "wildly overpraised, but not by me."

"Shalit has every right as a film critic to criticize Brokeback Mountain," GLAAD retorted. "But his baseless branding of Jack as a 'sexual predator' merely because he is romantically interested in someone of the same sex is defamatory, ignorant and irresponsible."

The group reported on its Website that GLAAD representatives had spoken with a Today show producer, who promised to bring their concerns to Shalit's attention.

While Shalit may not be a Brokeback fan, his colleagues in critique have clamored to commend the cowboy drama.

To date, the film has been named Best Picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle and deemed one of the year's 10 best films by the American Film Institute and the Broadcast Film Critics Association.

The kudos don't stop there--Brokeback is up for eight Critic's Choice Awards, seven Golden Globes, a Writers Guild Award, a Producers Guild Award, a Directors Guild Award and four Screen Actors Guild Awards, to name a few. And that's before nominations for the Academy Awards are announced on Jan. 31.
---------------------------
 
 
Mike Modular
01:38 / 16.01.06
Saw this tonight, lots to like about it, most of which has been said already here. Fave bits: The mountains; the snow; the time shifts; that the audience are credited with enough intelligence to interpret the unsaid, the euphemisms, what characters might really think/know; when Ennis finds the shirt...

Reminded me a lot of a play I worked on, The York Realist, which was also ostensibly a 'gay love story', but similarly had wider social and historical depth, as well as exploring the repercussions on family/women in a time and place where men just couldn't be gay.

However, I'd just like to make a pedantic point: They were gay shepherds, not cowboys. Which somehow sounds funnier...
 
 
Mourne Kransky
02:18 / 16.01.06
And has more of a potentially religious aspect, as the occasional Christian review has picked up on. I'm not sure Brokeback Mountain is hugely open to allegorical readings, but some have read it in 'fall from Eden' terms, giving the disembowelled sheep the morning after symbolic prominence.

The 'they're not cowboys' thing crops up frequently. As I understand it, 'cowboy' is not infrequently used as an umbrella term for anyone working on the Texas rodeo scene - so Jack, at least, would qualify.
 
 
modern maenad
07:39 / 16.01.06
Ganesh
I actually found myself more affected by the urgency and hunger of the 'four years later' moment. For me, that was the film's emotional pivot, and it puzzled me slightly when some of my fellow cinema-goers laughed at Alma's reaction.

Cherielabombe
I can't remember if I laughed or not when Alma saw Jack and Ennis but if I did it was purely out of an "Omigod what's gonna happen now??!?" sort of reaction. I suspect that's why many laughed

Ganesh
Yeah, I think you're probably right. We saw it tonight with a very visibly gay audience and, if anything, the nervous laugh at that point was louder. It is a pretty OMFG!!1! moment.

Saw this on saturday night at a large cinema in Oxford town centre and am particularly interested in the discussion of audience reaction to the film. I've been interested to read Ganesh and Cherielabombe's accounts and interpretations of audience laughter, as mine was very different (or perhaps the Oxford audience were more vocal). At the point where Jake and Ennis reunite after four years apart, and Alma sees them through the back door, the audience burst out laughing. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing - it's an explosive and intense moment, with Jack and Ennis' love confirmed while Alma's life is shattered - and people were laughing. For me it's the most concrete evidence I've had in a long time as to how far our society is from fully accepting the legitimacy of gay relationships. I just kept thinkign over and over, how would the audience be reacting if Alma was witnessing Ennis all over another woman? Would really like to discuss this further. I can see that it could be a form of nervous laughter, but something about that explanation doesn't sit quite right with what I heard/witnessed.
 
 
Spaniel
08:49 / 16.01.06
It seemed to me that Alma was never developed sufficiently as a character (so people failed to identify with her), add to that the fact that the scene is working with some pretty conflicting emotions - happiness, relief and joy vs shock, tension and sadness - and you have the have the recipe for a confused audience, hence audience laughter.

That's not to say I don't find any of the other explanations compelling.

When I watch the film again - which I will because I loved it - I'll be interested to see if I come away with the same impression of the Alma character.
 
 
Spaniel
08:56 / 16.01.06
Oh, I should add that I appreciate that the positive emotions are supposed to throw the negative emotions into relief during that scene.
 
 
Ganesh
09:06 / 16.01.06
(That last Xoc post is actually me on the shared computer, forgetting to log in again as 'Ganesh', BTW.)
 
 
Supaglue
09:14 / 16.01.06
Also saw it at the weekend and loved it. Not much to add to what's already gone beore on this thread. I can see Sleaze's comment that it is basically Brief Encounter in chaps.

Not really got alot to add to what has already been said - I can't see there's any more misogyny there than the fact that the wives are also victims of a passionate love straightjacketed by society. Ennis's callous neglect of his wife when he was due for his 'fishing' trips appeared to me to be more about his desire for jack overrinding everything rather than animosity towards his wife. Indeed, for most of the film he comes across as a devoted, if taciturn, husband.

Even the time he threatens to hit her when she confronts him about his trips seemed more down to the fact that he is a man of few words that gets frustrated when required to communicate and ends up lashing out.

The woman who has suffered in the film is Twist's mother - She's clearly suffered being married to a nasty little man and she conveys that in her eyes. You know she knows what its like to be caged into something for your whole life. Mix that up with the loss of a son she doted on ("I kept the room as it was when he was a boy, he liked that") and it becomes the most moving scene in the film - I don't think a film intent on portraying single-angled misogyny would have the dignity of Ma Twist in it.

As an aside, was Jake Gyllenhaal wearing heavy eyeliner, partukicularly when he was younger? He looked at times like he was set for a Martin Bashir interview....
 
 
modern maenad
09:21 / 16.01.06
Boboss, Yeah, I reckon the cipherous use of Alma does add to this, as does the range of emotions going on, but I'm still left with the suspicioun that the laughter is an index of Ennis and Jake's relationship not being taken seriously. Its just a hunch, based largely on how suprised I was by the audience reaction - am open to alternative takes on this though.
 
 
Spaniel
09:32 / 16.01.06
The thought had occurred to me too, and I think you have a point.

I think a lot of factors were at work there.
 
 
Ganesh
10:14 / 16.01.06
The second time we saw Brokeback Mountain, the audience was much more visibly gay male, with a lot of same-sex coupledom. If anything, the gay men seemed to be laughing more at the Alma scene - which actually chimes with some other experiences of seeing celluloid/theatrical male-male love in the company of groups of (particularly) young gay men. Whether it'd be filed under 'internalised homophobia' I don't know, but gay male audiences are often the worst at taking depicted gay relationships seriously.
 
 
Spaniel
10:34 / 16.01.06
The guys behind us, who I'm pretty sure were gay, were laughing particularly hard.
 
 
modern maenad
10:49 / 16.01.06
Should add that audience seemed predominately young and straight, lots of hettie couples when I went (I remember my sister lamenting that it was so obviously a 'date night'). Though realise this is only a guestimate....
 
 
sleazenation
11:43 / 16.01.06
But isn't Brokeback a date movie?

I'd argue that the laughter from the audience denotes the audience taking the implications of ennis and jack's romance incredibly seriously - the impact of their relationship is a whole other order of magnitude to a simple 'my husband seeing another woman'... particularly in the context of 1960s Wyoming... the audience is recognising that in their reaction...
 
 
Spaniel
12:02 / 16.01.06
Not dismissing your thinking, Sleaze, but I'm trying to work out how it translates into the loud, widespread chortling that erupted across the cinema when I saw the movie.
Maybe it was just me, but it seemed as if people were simply failing to empathise.
 
 
modern maenad
12:03 / 16.01.06
I'm just having trouble with how seeing your husband passionately kissing someone else is funny? In that scene Alma looks devastated, and the men aren't playing it for laughs in any way. I don't know, feel like I'm going round in circles a bit.
 
 
modern maenad
12:07 / 16.01.06
Boboss, yeah, think failure to empathise is perhaps key to this, which I'm reading as stemming from a more widespread 'failure' (to put it kindly) to see love between two men as legitimate and valid.
 
 
Ganesh
12:12 / 16.01.06
Brokeback Mountain probably is a date movie, amongst other things.

Having thought about it, I'm inclined to agree with Sleaze to a certain extent regarding the audience reaction at that point in the film ie. I'm not sure that it necessarily means individual audience members were taking the implications less seriously than they would've done had Jack been 'another woman'.

I do think, however, that the way the reaction is expressed is reflective of the way our culture hasn't taken same-sex relationships seriously. 'Straight' male infidelity with another male is something that a) doesn't make sense to some, and b) has, with a few exceptions, been milked more for comic potential than tragic.

I wonder whether there's a difference between the laughter of straight and gay audience members at that point. Obviously it's impossible to gauge this stuff from tone alone, but I wondered whether some of the gay male laughter was underpinned with a sort of 'that's what you get for marrying a gay man, you stupid cow' faint contempt for Alma - because, at that point, we were all identifying with Ennis, Jack and the promise of hungry four-years-apart sex.

Or possibly that was all in my own brane.
 
 
Aertho
12:13 / 16.01.06
I'm shocked as well.

Proud to say that my audience both gasped and uttered mumblings of "Oh Nooooo". Poor Alma.
 
 
Ganesh
12:28 / 16.01.06
... a more widespread 'failure' (to put it kindly) to see love between two men as legitimate and valid.

I think this is not infrequently as true for gay people's worldviews as those of their straight counterparts. One of the other experiences to which I alluded was going to see Blowing Whistles, a play centred around a gay male couple who've been together ten years. It's been a fairly big hit and, the night we saw it, the tiny theatre was packed with gay men.

It's fair to say there was a lot of 'recognition' expressed by the boisterous audience, in the course of the play - but I was unprepared for the reaction to the two leads kissing. Tittering, giggling, hands over eyes, not knowing where to look... it was incredibly, I dunno, adolescent. And these were credible actors doing a bloody good job - yet a gay male audience acted like a bunch of embarrassed teenagers.

I'm not at all sure what, if anything, this teaches us about the audience reaction to Brokeback Mountain but I do think that, among the gay males anyway, there might be (as well as the slight contempt for Alma I mentioned above) a large factor of embarrassment in the idea of men observed passionately kissing men. Sex we can handle, but sincere onscreen intimacy...?
 
 
modern maenad
12:41 / 16.01.06
Sex we can handle, but sincere onscreen intimacy...?

oooh, interesting. When I read your post my brain started jumping around in an 'all men squirm at intimacy' dance, which I quickly extinguised 'cos that's just crass, but I am still wondering about gendered reactions to the portrayal of intimacy, to the extent that they exist (though women were laughing in the cinema too). I wonder if uncomfortableness with the emotion is the root of the chortling - noone was laughing during the first sex scene, so its not a general freak out over men getting it on. So we're talking a combination of factors, of which lack of empathy is one, and squirming over intense love between men another.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
12:41 / 16.01.06
I went to see this with a few gay male acquaintances, and the rows in front and behind me consisted of a lot of male couples too.

I was a bit shocked to hear them laughing the most at that scene. I got the impression that there was a fair amount of latent misogyny directed towards Alma at that moment and even heard some comments along the lines of "hah, stupid bitch!"

Anyway, IMO it was a good film but not a great one. I just couldn't muster up enough sympathy for the 2 lead characters to be overtly affected by them.
 
 
modern maenad
12:47 / 16.01.06
I got the impression that there was a fair amount of latent misogyny directed towards Alma at that moment and even heard some comments along the lines of "hah, stupid bitch!"

Hattie - thats just pretty fucking depressing really isn't it? Hadn't even crossed my mind that people were laughing at Alma.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
12:49 / 16.01.06
Yeah, it was depressing. Maybe that's why I didn't enjoy the film so much. But I'm going to see it again so hopefully I can provide a more reasoned assessment.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
12:59 / 16.01.06
BAREBACK MOUNTAIN trailer
 
 
Loomis
13:01 / 16.01.06
I don't recall any laughing at my screening but my principal reaction to the scene was that it was poor writing. I don't see anything in Ennis's character to believe that he would snog Jack in full view of his front door. He keeps a tight lid on his feelings throughout the rest of the movie, and four years or not, I didn't believe that he wouldn't go around the corner or something.
 
  

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