painful and beautiful all at once...

Rating: 10/10 (1 January 2006)

The fact that I have signed up to write this review speaks volumes... as much as the fact that I have read the last 32 pages of reviews before deciding to add my two cents.
This is a movie that I had been anticipating to watch since I saw the trailers earlier in the year for a couple of reasons. The first because the great Ang Lee was coming out with a new film and the story intrigued me.
This story has resonated with me the way that it has with all of the reviewers that I have read so far and I echo their sentiments in that it haunts you long after you have left the theater.
To love and lost or never loved at all, is the question that I posed my friend that I saw the film with on my first viewing. Her answer was simple... to love and lost. I asked that question because of the fact that Ennis' pain at the end of the film is so apparent that you wonder if it was worth it but you realize that it is completely out of his control. Another important question for me that this movie brought to mind the second time that I watched it was the role that fear brought to Ennis and how it stopped him from fulfilling his own happiness with Jack.
The performances were exquisite and Ang Lee is a genius for bringing us this remarkable and haunting love story.
It is quite obvious that this film has resonated with a cord in the majority of the viewing public, and we all have our own views on what that is. This love story was heartbreaking, gut wrenching, but beautiful and thought provoking at the same time. I highly recommend that you go see this film and leave what you think you may know about this film at the door and be prepared to be brought into the tragic and forbidden love of Ennis DelMar and Jack Twist.