Brokeback Mountain Is Our Mount Olympus

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2006)

I have seen "Brokeback" several times now. I plan to see it many more. Each time I notice something I hadn't noticed previously. What I have noticed chiefly, though, is the profound influence it is having on my life. I do not think anything -- book, film, play, therapy or person -- has had such an effect on me in the last several decades. For the first time in my life, I have understood what a catharsis really is. I mean I studied the Greeks in college, learning all about Oedipus, Medea, etc. I could probably write eloquently on the subject if I put my mind to it. But I think this was the first time in my life that I ever underwent one. After the second viewing, when I had returned home, I was just about to turn on the computer, when all of a sudden a tender scene between Ennis and Jake came into mind. I begun to convulse so violently, I couldn't breathe. After I began gasping for air, I started to sob. I cried so hard and for so long I thought it wouldn't stop. I became alarmed. I had never felt such emotional agony. It was as if a lifetime of pain -- longing, the loss of loved ones, fear, self-doubt, failed romances, goals not met and regrets for a squandered youth -- suddenly rose to the surface. After much effort, I was able to calm down. The next day, I felt as if a huge weight had lifted. In some ways, I felt reborn. Ready like Ennis, perhaps, to change. Such is the power of "Brokeback Mountain." It is on the highest level of the great tragedies. Those boys in their cowboy hats are the gods of a new myth, whose deeds and misdeeds can transform us.