Queer Normality

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 2020)

It's fabulous to reflect on, writing this in 2020, how much has changed in the 15 years since "Brokeback Mountain" was released. It was singular at the time as a serious film about gayness that was mainstream, and it's the play on cinematic conventions and normality that is central to its aesthetic quality, as well as its societal influence in broadening the acceptance of homosexuality. There are no tropes of flamboyancy here. No depictions of LGBT political activity and hardly any focus on places where gay men might congregate (the entire nation of Mexico, somewhere in which Jack looks for male prostitutes, coming closest). Instead, it's set in the most iconic of American genres, of conservative rural areas and repressive past times, within heterosexual marriages and families, and at the heart of the country's cinematic formation of masculinity for over a century, the Western. Indeed, it's also part melodrama, even soap opera, and almost Shakespearean tragedy, which largely makes for the picture's emotional appeal. It's this plea to the familiar that made "Brokeback Mountain" a landmark in film history. Fifteen years later, as "Brokeback" has become slang and lines such as "I wish I knew how to quit you" have become infinitely quotable and parodied, let alone increased tolerance of sexuality in the world at large, there may be risk of losing sight of how extraordinary this ordinariness was then.
It's there in the cinematography, too. Sure, we see a well-composed cloudy, hillside vista here and there between scenes in the wilderness, but intrusion of pretty landscapes here are reserved for the other side of the postcards Ennis and Jack write to each other. These are familiar views for these cowboys and so become so for the spectator. These are men fully shaped by and belonging to this environment. It's in the populated spaces of the West where they sometimes run afoul, where Ennis fights other men out of his frustration, or where Jack suffers the emasculation by his father-in-law or tries to carefully navigate other liaisons. Probably the most conspicuously staged shot in the entire picture happens at a town fireworks show, the explosions of light and color in the background as Heath Ledger stands over a low-angle shot after he's just got into a violent altercation with two men. There doesn't seem to be any counterpoint shots in the mountains for the pun on "explosive" of this shot in town, or even, say, the contrast of Jack riding a bull at a rodeo before shortly thereafter being ridden by his soon-to-be-wife in a car.
The acting is remarkable and subtle, too. Yes, Heath Ledger is great, but so is the supporting cast, including as well as Jake Gyllenhaal, the two actresses playing the lovers' wives, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway. Just as early on, as Ledger and Gyllenhaal's exchange of looks told us all we needed to know about their attraction for each other even before their first sexual or intimate contact, we can see in the faces of Williams and Hathaway how much they know about the affair and how they've coped with it. We see this early on with Williams as a co-spectator to the unfolding romance and how she struggles to remain with us in not interfering or participating in it. Hathaway provides an opposite tract, of a wife seemingly wrapped up in the dynamics of her family business and her relationship to Jack seemingly only extending to his role in raising their son and dealing with her domineering father. But, then, we get that fantastic phone call near the end and an array of emotional indications as to how much she may have known and reacted to it. There's been a lot of discussion, legitimately, about how "Brokeback Mountain" and Ledger should've won the top prizes at the Oscars, but the biggest snub is arguably that Hathaway was the only one of the four to not even be nominated.
But, back to the men, the Western genre here is key to the picture's take on masculinity. Narrative cinema in the United States was practically founded in the Western with "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) and continued through Hollywood churning out B-picture shoot-'em-ups with stars such as Tom Mix performing riding tricks, saving damsels and gunning down other men--all before the likes of John Ford and Clint Eastwood further defined an ultra-aggressive and conservative ideology of manhood on screen, whether by slaughtering Indians, tavern stand-offs, or street duels, in the name of the politics of Manifest Destiny and the rights to and protection of the leading ladies. It's all of that familiar structure that "Brokeback Mountain" was intentionally positioned, with a short story originally written by a woman and co-adapted by another, as directed by a Taiwanese filmmaker, Ang Lee, and that is about gay cowboys, one of whom accompanies his wife to see one of those classic Westerns, "Hud" (1963), at a drive-in theatre. Sure, they're the "Marlboro Men;" smoking, fighting whisky drinkers eating beans over a campfire, the strong silent types, more John Wayne than Judy Garland. That's the point. It's how "Brokeback Mountain" upended the entire industry's treatment of homosexuality and masculinity, and it's what makes it, including through the cinematography, a beautiful piece of art.