A sad film about the destructive power of love.

Rating: 7/10 (27 September 2008)

"Brokeback Mountain" is a sad film about the destructive power of love. The danger of making a movie from a short story/novella with an explicit homosexual storyline is that - given the potentially enormous audience base as opposed to a relatively small readership for a cultish author - the work may be hi - jacked by those with a different agenda and used for their own political purposes. Thus "Brokeback Mountain",the movie,has been declared by many as a "Gay Masterpiece",a revolution in film - making and "Empowering" for gay men. And it is of course none of those things. By setting it in the last year of the Kennedy Adminstration we are dealing with the mysterious past for most of its target audience.But even in repressed old England attitudes towards homosexuality were relaxing as a result of a wider general tolerance for individual sexual freedom as exemplified by the "Lady Chatterley" trial when Penguin Books were acquitted of obscenity charges at the Old Bailey. 40 years later the battles have been won.This is reflected in the fact that apart from a few rumblings from the Fascist Right and the usual protests from the Bible Belt,the movie passed unscathed through mainstream theatres throughout the U.S. and Europe.It is preaching,then,to the converted.Not a revolution,a re - affirmation. Gay men and women do not need "Empowering" - a patronising concept at the best of times - they have the same civil rights as everybody else. They do not have to use separate washrooms,sit in the back of the bus,eat in "Gay Only" diners,they are not discouraged from voting..... to compare the treatment of gays to the treatment of black people is insulting to one faction and condescending to the other. What we have left in the movie "Brokeback Mountain" relieved of its baggage is a very sad tale of two men who fall in love and because of the moral climate of the day are forced to live a lie.The tragedy is not only theirs but more so their wives.Two totally innocent women who,all unknowing,are being used and deceived by the men they love.All those lives ruined.If it had been made in 1964 the movie would have indeed been revolutionary,daring and sensational.By 2005 it is merely a look back to an age when the love that dare not speak its name still dared not speak its name.Now,perhaps,there are no more Great Causes for movie makers.