More Touching Than Most Heterosexual Love Stories I've Seen.

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2006)

A lot of my friends think I'm some woman trapped in a man's body, or in a nutshell, less respectable, because I freely admit that I cry at movies. These friends of mine are either very shallow, or much less secure with themselves than they appear to be. Either way, I came out of this gem of a film crying until the streaks of tears running down my face dried and hardened my skin into a thick, sticky glue. I don't think I've been touched by any love story between a man and a woman the way I have been by this man-to-man love story. It infuriates me to know that this movie has had such a hard time because it's about a gay male relationship. I mean, in the year 2006, people are mad because a movie comes out that they don't have to see about a couple of dudes.
I went to a local theater with a friend of mine to see it, having found that it was finally playing in Cincinnati. Up until the day before, I was constantly checking theater listings here on IMDb and finding that it was playing almost everywhere, except for southern Ohio, not to mention a few of the southern states. I was excited going to see it, finding an incredibly long line of people leading into the theater.
I was enjoying the movie until, fifteen minutes into it, a voice sounded over the entire theater. It boomed, "Attention, attention, attention. There has been an emergency reported. We ask that everyone please evacuate the theater through the exits on either side of the screen." And so, we all evacuated. I'm wondering whether or not it's a fire, but when I saw three fire engines, three ambulances, and an uncertain number of intermittent police cars, what other conclusion could I draw than the likely possibility that it was a bomb threat. I'm sure there was no bomb, but the theater has to follow procedure. They have no choice. I went to see it again the following week.
Cincinnati is not the only place where we have to worry about the desperate, inexplicable measures of religious or political fanatics whenever we want to see a movie. In Salt Lake City, it was banned. They claimed that they didn't want children to see it and be influenced by the homosexual activity in it. However, they are letting Hostel play there. You remember in Hostel when those people were mutilated with chainsaws and that guy held a blowtorch point blank in that girl's face, baking and disintegrating it? Why are these people not worried about their children being influenced by the gruesomely sadistic activity in Hostel?
It's difficult to be influenced by homosexual activity. Homosexuality is a natural sexual orientation. A gay person is born attracted to their own sex just like a straight person is born attracted to the opposite. It's naive to say that homosexuality is a choice. Try it yourself just to make sure. Let go of your inhibitions and choose for a day to be attracted to your own sex. Try to fantasize about them. Even try hitting on them. Unless your are naturally attracted to men or women, you won't truly be.
Look at it in terms of common sense. Who would choose to be gay? Being straight is safe, because that's what the majority of the population is. Being gay is a much harder life because you have a much smaller number of people to choose from, and you're constantly oppressed, perhaps even beaten to death like Matthew Shephard. Which would you choose?
Oh, and by the way, remember Bound? It's another great movie with two gay protagonists. However, they are lesbians. Do you recall this much protest at any point with Bound? No. So let me get this straight. Girls having sex with girls is cute. Guys having sex with guys only gets them the attention that Mr. Shephard got in Laramie. Huh. Well, I must say, that boils it down to incredibly self-centered and ignorant male-dominated society, not to mention a pathetic weakness and insecurity in men that almost makes me ashamed to be a man.
Brokeback Mountain is one of my favorite films now, and it really stimulates emotion the way a love story is supposed to. Ang Lee's brilliant direction keeps the film at a steady, constantly brisk pace at the same time it keeps the film in a low key, in a calm, docile mood, no matter how jarring or tear-jerking it can be.
If you want to knock it for having gay guys in it, go ahead and knock all the other gay guys in history: Tennessee Williams, Margaret Cho, Christopher Walken, Joe Pesci, Nathan Lane, Stephen Sondheim, Edith Head, Alan Ball, Gus Van Sant, Alan Cumming, Walt Whitman, Jean Cocteau, Alice Walker, Charles Laughton, Nigel Hawthorne, James Ivory, George Cukor, Billie Holiday, Tchaikovsky, Jean-Michael Basquiat, Francis Poulenc, Anthony Rapp, ad infinitum.