Should Love Always Be A Reasoned Choice? Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

Rating: 10/10 (8 April 2013)

One of the problems with watching this film for the first time is all the baggage that has already loaded onto it--all the controversy, all the various agendas that viewers bring to it; So many people who watch this film seem to have already prepared themselves to watch a different film--that is, they want a traditional love story, or they hope for more action, or want a Gay entitlement film or they expect it to be a conventional Western in ways that it is not. I think that the fascinating appeal of this film is that it can shoehorn itself into several genres and still come out ahead.
I saw this film for the first time several days ago, and am still haunted by the repression forced on both leading men by a traditional small-town life, by expected values and early childhood experiences, by grinding poverty that gives them very little with which to enrich themselves.
Who knows why we pick the people we really love, and even today, except on television talk shows, how easy is it to confess even to ourselves why we sometimes choose to be reasonable instead of passionate?
The contrasts in this film between the great freedom of expansive, forested vistas and the cramped rented trailers where physical needs and emotional wounds are nursed are strong, and the performances persuasive. Brokeback Mountain has obviously touched lives in many ways, else how to explain the more than 2,000 reviews of the film on this site? I think this is a challenging film, and if you're looking to be lightly entertained, look elsewhere.