On Brokeback Mountain

Rating: 10/10 (21 April 2006)

I remember when this movie was in the works, there was tremendous buzz about it. An Oscar Winning Director with Mainstream leads in a story about two men in love in 1960's Wyoming. Unfortunately, by the time it got to theaters, the simple yet effective premise was horribly overshadowed by nudge, nudge jokes about "gay cowboys" and men having sex with each other in a tent. This movie had the potential to change the hearts and minds of Americans both straight AND gay (since gay people nowadays are too excited about the minstrel spectacle of gay men doing gay things in front of gay people on gay television) on how gay men lived and still live their lives.
The truth is that Brokeback Mountain and the story itself of two men feeling something they cant fully understand and left to their own devices to figure their emotions out, could take place in 1963 or 2003. It is an accurate (although not pretty) portrayal of how gay men live their lives with one another as they interpret love and fidelity on both theirs and another man's terms. It is a subject that deserved a great deal more respect than it got and it was a subject that certainly needed more attention than the old story of how sad and pathetic people in L.A's lives are that they need to crash into one another to feel something. Los Angeles has shoved it's disgusting pathology into people's throats since 1991.
Yes its tragic that blacks and whites don't get along in Los Angeles and that cops are corrupt and racist and hate their job and are bitter about anything and everyone around them. I hate to break it to you, but I learned that lesson years ago from Ice-T. By the way, it's ironic that "Crash" needed a pretty white girl to sing a song about how black people and white people don't get along in LA...or maybe not ironic, just bad casting.
It should be sufficient to note that "Brokeback Mountain" opened doors for more movies to come that accurately portray the culture of homosexuality in America. But for me it's not. When you have the chance to knock a movie like this out of the ballpark and truly impact our society as this movie had, a pat on the back isn't exactly what you want when it doesn't happen.