Gimmicky "masterpiece"

Rating: 3/10 (2 December 2009)

Had it been a man-woman love story, it would have been labeled as a boring and predictable TV-movie. But since it was about "gay cowboys", and the director was Ang Lee and not some random guy, Brokeback Mountain got the immediate Masterpiece status.
Let me get this straight (pun intended): it's NOT a movie about homosexuality, coming out or same-sex relationship.
The whole "gay" theme is an excuse, a gimmick if you will.
Honestly, for being homosexuals, both Jack and Ennis did get more than enough (female) tail. Are we supposed to believe they could live a lie for 350 days a year, just being the real them in the one occasion they went "fishing" together? For all those years?
Sorry, I don't buy it for one second.
Brokeback Mountain uses the homosexuality like a promotional tool, while in the movie itself the issue almost gets treated like a secondary topic.
Moreso: the sexual intercourse takes place early in the movie, so the cat is out of the bag when there's still plenty of time and the rest of the movie is devoted to a dragging and tiresome hide-and-seek game which has really no reason to be... They are attracted to each other, we KNOW that... And if that wasn't bad enough, the characters have a rather sloppy psychological evolution, if any.
Since they pretty much pretended to be straight, getting married and having kids, the dramatic tension goes out of the window. Even the "revelation" to the wife is, at that point, sterile.
I'll gracefully gloss over the melodramatic ending.
So in the end Brokeback Mountain suffers from the typical "much ado about nothing" syndrome. The allegedly shocking topic gets treated in a very stereotypical way and doesn't even get developed like it could have been. The rest of the movie is visually pleasant, but too glossy. The acting ranges from overdriven to just fine, surely nowhere near Oscar material.
My final impression was Ennis and Jack weren't more gay than J.D. and Turk from "Scrubs"... It was just a very deep bond, with the occasional "episode" of homosexual intercourse. But hardly a revolutionary take on same-sex love.
Those who hailed Brokeback Mountain as a milestone for the movie industry and as a milestone for homosexuality awareness either didn't watch the movie, or just wanted it to be so and didn't bother to actually see if it was the case or not.
A wasted occasion, because the basic idea had so much potential. Too bad they took the cheap way.