Why it stays with you and what to do about it..

Rating: 10/10 (18 June 2006)

One of the most overwhelming aspects of this film, and at the same time its genius, is how its story absorbs you into itself, finally wounds you and leaves you bleeding; yet it is a wounding that is also healing... Rather than fading by the time you get home and back to 'life', instead grief and bittersweet pain visit in waves until, alone, in private moments of the day, tears well-up.
It's at once exhilarating and disturbing to be so deeply affected by a film. When it persists more that a day or two, albeit gently, you begin to wonder just what is happening to you.. Which brings me to my point: Brokeback Mountain is not staggering in its impact on you because of superficial concern for characters, but for how it somehow seduces you into confronting vicariously your own thwarted dreams, missed opportunities, thinly covered disappointments - even shame of your own unhappiness; so too your first loves, your great loves, the memory of love. One is ambushed by one's own phantoms and fondest memories, in potent and distilled form. It's not so much the movie that won't seem to leave us but our own soul's joys, sorrows and hopes, surfaced and in need of the light of day.
So what are we to do? See the film endlessly? It is tempting to believe one more viewing will give me something more.. Probably not the final solution. What we need to do is read the text of our own life now, albeit as dramatically surfaced and illuminated for us by a film. We need now to re-enter the adventure of responsible liberty and walk resolutely and courageously into this storm that has come to visit us. We cannot out-source this profound task to film makers or anyone else, no matter how they may have inspired us. It is for us now to finish the story...
As Proust wrote on the ultimate inability of other's books (or films) to satisfy us in our quest for truth and spiritual life,
"Reading (movie-going) is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it."
Bon courage à tous...