A sadly-gay film

Rating: 9/10 (3 February 2006)

I'll be honest here, gay-kissing scenes make me squirm a little. I know that a relationship between any two people (as long as thy are consenting adults) is just as noble and worthy as the next and I despise all the hate ridden mongrels who proclaim "God hates fagots". I believe that if god hates humans, he hates those who are dispersing hatred, bigotry and narrow mindedness. I sincerely believe all those things. The problem is, no one had bothered to notify my stomach about it. If my stomach would have written the review, it would seem like a Jerry Falwell manifest. Thank god my stomach's only job these days is to make my jeans feel like spandex.
In 1963, my stomach's opinions were pretty common. Gays were ridiculed and scorned. Those who were unfortunate enough to be recognized as gays were severely punished, not by the law but certainly without repercussions from law enforcers. 1963 was also the year that the lives of Anis del mar (Heath Ledger in a wonderful performance) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal in an equally great performance)
were conjoined and altered forever. Anis and Jack were assigned to lead a herd of sheep for a week for mountain grazing. The two young men, each one with his aspirations and his southern roots deeply embedded in them, found in each other their soul mates.
It goes without saying that in 1963 Wyoming (and let's face it, also everywhere in 2005) gay relationships were, to say the least, frowned upon and the two men had to build a life in the rural, southern states, start a family and go through the process that had no room for two gay man to materialize their love. Anis turned to the cattle business, Jack was a rodeo rider and later, a sleek salesman. Both living out the lives society deemed them to have.
They also continued to see each other, having a clandestine affair where they basically, reenacted that week they spent together in the scenic location that the film bares its name. At some point, suspicion was bound to rise and that unfulfilled love and loveless marriages are never without a heavy toll. This toll is the recurring motive in the characters' lives and the thread that binds the movie.
That thread is a subtle one, it reflects on the characters' weaknesses. Don't expect to find the "Queer as folk" plot lines, this movie is about regular people, not overly sensitive men, not inspiring visionaries, just two guys that fell in love with each other in time and place that left them very little chance to pursue their common personal aspirations.
Unfortunately for the film, the same thread that makes it a subtle, atmosphere oriented feature is also the thread that stretches for 130 minutes that I (and not just my stomach) found to be partially redundant.
Than it dawned on me. Jack and Anis, written, acted and directed almost flawlessly, are too dominant in the film. The supporting roles (Excellent performance all round, especially Michelle Williams and Anna Faris) were wrongfully remained a background setting while the ongoing endless struggle of Jack and Anis between their love and their obligations seems repetitive and is drained of new angles somewhere toward the end of the movie.
In what the movie succeeds beyond expectations and will prompt me to evaluate it more now than I did when I exited the movie theater is the notion that keeps running in my head. Have we evolved since then? Oh, sure we all accept gay relationships, I have gay fiends and I couldn't care less who they choose as their life partners. We all heard of actors and performers living for a very long time with same-gender partners and we wink to each other and we genuinely know there is nothing morally wrong in this scenario. Where we made little progress, though is in our tendency to hush it, many times we rationalize that many people are still not openly gay by their will to avoid unnecessary hassle while secretly knowing that the gay issue remains uncomfortable.
This movie, though low on plot and pacing and sometimes sluggishly dialogued, leaves a mark of impression and raises issues in 130 minutes screening that a generation of well mannered debates never managed to raise. The rarest of achievements.
9.5 out of 10 in my FilmOmeter.
p.s. It was today, 4/2/06, when a gay bar was smashed and brutalized by ignorant hate mongers. Those are still out there but that's not the reason why I bring this up. The reason is thee are many gay bars that are not the sign of progress but, rather, the indication of how little we changed since 1963. The straight bars are still not welcoming the gay community and those gay men and women have to wonder off on carefully marked, highly distinguished places that are nothing but the indication of how little our society had assimilated them. Unfortunately, not one movie, even this one, will make the difference.