"Brokeback Mountain": A Semi-Review
4-24-06 Premature Mutterings & Critical Cant
I watched a long piece of "Brokeback Mountain" at home on VCR yesterday. Let me tell you my Anticipations & Results. First of all two adult women one age 53 & the other past 40 and each of an Independent cast of mind told me the movie is unusual, original, and far exceeding the average fare of film coming down the pike these days. A number of film critics also raved about this movie---including Kenneth Turan who has been the LA Times main reviewer since the retirement of Charles Champlin. Mr. Turan slammed The Academy for awarding Number 1 prize to "CRASH" for Best Film of 2005. Turan raged that "CRASH" isn't even in the same World of Originality & Genius as "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN" which stars Heath Ledger & Jake Gyllenhaal.
After I had viewed what turned out to be the film's first 36 minutes I checked my stop watch & was STUNNED to note that more than half an hour had passed & Nothing significant or INTERESTING (to me!) had occurred in this supposedly Original movie. I mean nothing nothing nothing. Two cowboys are fucking around watching a huge herd of sheep & one night they find themselves cornholing in a makeshift tent. Decidedly UN-interesting unless you happen to be homosexual which I'm not. There is nothing Universally compelling in any of these 36 minutes. Just utter farm Boredom. And I mean uninterruptedly tedious. SO, I say to myself, what in the HELL is with those people screaming for this film to be Numero Uno---unless they have a Gay-Lesbian agenda? This movie is a downer.
I however decide to watch some more just to find out if Nirvana is in the Middle. And I do continue to watch until each of the cowboys has found himself a wife & sired children---and then the cowboys got themselves back together for some real man to man mouth to mouth resuscitation and Prove themselves true Homosexual dads. At that point----I guess around the 70- or 75-minute mark----- I cashed in my chips and brought the DVD back to the store. I had not been moved emotionally by a single scene. I did find it half amusing when Heath Ledger's wife catches through the upper window the two cowboys passionately embracing & mouth-kissing in a stairwell outside their home---much to her total Astonishment. But that surely does not constitute a movie. I am sure many people of a same-sex persuasion found this movie at least "interesting" even though it had nothing compelling in it for me. But then to suddenly leap in the air & yell Academy Awards, Greatness---Originality! No. Just an average Hollywood cowboy movie with previously repressed homosexual acts in it but contaning not one element of eternal universal drama. A dull movie for the present reviewer. After 65 to 75 minutes it left me empty.
I of course am opposed to any censorship whatsoever. And movie critics should be absolutely free to espouse any ideas they see fit. But let's call things by their correct names. This movie has nothing in it for those like myself who are looking for The Dream of The Prince & The Princess to be fulfilled. And I wonder what Kenneth Turan is doing crushing a movie like "CRASH" with his expletives calling it mediocre compared with this to him utterly triumphant & totally ORIGINAL piece of American Genius rendered us by the GRRRREAT director Ang Lee. "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN" is not a great movie. It's a so-so movie whose main source of appeal will be to the Gay-Lesbians out there plus those heterosexual women who got tangled up with gay husbands & got their insides pretty well mangled when (IF!) they Found Out the Real Facts. Since so many Other People received such substantial Pleasure from the movie one can still be thankful it was made. Art exists for the Pleasure of The Species! So I'm glad there's somebody out there taking care of the needs of the previously unattended.
For myself however this is a movie that has already been erased from my palimpsest. I vastly preferred "Something's Gotta Give" which I saw on television the night before with Jack Nicholson & Diane Keaton which is about an older man & woman discovering true love in their 60's and really going crazy. That's my cup of tea. And I am by no means an automatic Keaton or Nicholson admirer. I see them as neutral figures on the screen. Just as I also judge the actors Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger & director Ang Lee to be neutral screen presences.
RLG Copyright, 2006
I watched a long piece of "Brokeback Mountain" at home on VCR yesterday. Let me tell you my Anticipations & Results. First of all two adult women one age 53 & the other past 40 and each of an Independent cast of mind told me the movie is unusual, original, and far exceeding the average fare of film coming down the pike these days. A number of film critics also raved about this movie---including Kenneth Turan who has been the LA Times main reviewer since the retirement of Charles Champlin. Mr. Turan slammed The Academy for awarding Number 1 prize to "CRASH" for Best Film of 2005. Turan raged that "CRASH" isn't even in the same World of Originality & Genius as "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN" which stars Heath Ledger & Jake Gyllenhaal.
After I had viewed what turned out to be the film's first 36 minutes I checked my stop watch & was STUNNED to note that more than half an hour had passed & Nothing significant or INTERESTING (to me!) had occurred in this supposedly Original movie. I mean nothing nothing nothing. Two cowboys are fucking around watching a huge herd of sheep & one night they find themselves cornholing in a makeshift tent. Decidedly UN-interesting unless you happen to be homosexual which I'm not. There is nothing Universally compelling in any of these 36 minutes. Just utter farm Boredom. And I mean uninterruptedly tedious. SO, I say to myself, what in the HELL is with those people screaming for this film to be Numero Uno---unless they have a Gay-Lesbian agenda? This movie is a downer.
I however decide to watch some more just to find out if Nirvana is in the Middle. And I do continue to watch until each of the cowboys has found himself a wife & sired children---and then the cowboys got themselves back together for some real man to man mouth to mouth resuscitation and Prove themselves true Homosexual dads. At that point----I guess around the 70- or 75-minute mark----- I cashed in my chips and brought the DVD back to the store. I had not been moved emotionally by a single scene. I did find it half amusing when Heath Ledger's wife catches through the upper window the two cowboys passionately embracing & mouth-kissing in a stairwell outside their home---much to her total Astonishment. But that surely does not constitute a movie. I am sure many people of a same-sex persuasion found this movie at least "interesting" even though it had nothing compelling in it for me. But then to suddenly leap in the air & yell Academy Awards, Greatness---Originality! No. Just an average Hollywood cowboy movie with previously repressed homosexual acts in it but contaning not one element of eternal universal drama. A dull movie for the present reviewer. After 65 to 75 minutes it left me empty.
I of course am opposed to any censorship whatsoever. And movie critics should be absolutely free to espouse any ideas they see fit. But let's call things by their correct names. This movie has nothing in it for those like myself who are looking for The Dream of The Prince & The Princess to be fulfilled. And I wonder what Kenneth Turan is doing crushing a movie like "CRASH" with his expletives calling it mediocre compared with this to him utterly triumphant & totally ORIGINAL piece of American Genius rendered us by the GRRRREAT director Ang Lee. "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN" is not a great movie. It's a so-so movie whose main source of appeal will be to the Gay-Lesbians out there plus those heterosexual women who got tangled up with gay husbands & got their insides pretty well mangled when (IF!) they Found Out the Real Facts. Since so many Other People received such substantial Pleasure from the movie one can still be thankful it was made. Art exists for the Pleasure of The Species! So I'm glad there's somebody out there taking care of the needs of the previously unattended.
For myself however this is a movie that has already been erased from my palimpsest. I vastly preferred "Something's Gotta Give" which I saw on television the night before with Jack Nicholson & Diane Keaton which is about an older man & woman discovering true love in their 60's and really going crazy. That's my cup of tea. And I am by no means an automatic Keaton or Nicholson admirer. I see them as neutral figures on the screen. Just as I also judge the actors Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger & director Ang Lee to be neutral screen presences.
RLG Copyright, 2006
posted by rlg at 12:48 PM
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