Wake Up!

Rating: 5/10 (17 January 2006)

Brokeback Mountain A film hailed to be a masterpiece and a classic, but in reality nothing but a sign of mainstream tolerance in the gay debate Hollywood have finally managed to make a film that openly deals with the theme of gay love - outside Hollywood it's been going on for ages and I could mention a lot of films, dealing with the same theme that does it much better But hey, Brokeback Mountain is, being a commercial American Movie coming straight out of the factory - better than average, but still very far from being a masterpiece.
I found the beginning of the film very slow. What especially annoys me, was that I never got that there was a growing romantic and erotic tension building up between the two main characters  (Jack hints an interest in Ennis the first scene) but otherwise it's not really shown except their fighting, before suddenly on a chilly night, after some whiskey  the two men jump on each other, inside their beat-up tent  a scene I found rather awkward and rough and with absolute no deep felt desire or affection going on between them
And from there it goes on, but I didn't at any time believe that there was that strong feelings between them, and also it seemed obvious that the director was very far from his subject, with the result that the characters like the film as a whole, seemed far too superficial to either be believable or moving
The acting from the two main characters was good though it was very hard to understand what exactly Ennis is saying, but maybe that's on purpose? Another thing was the ageing of the characters, it was surprisingly good but questionable  especially the belly Jack developed with time looked very fake and his wife still in her late 30s looking like a teenager, just wearing a bad wig?
In general the film is beautifully crafted, but I don't see any artistic quality or anything groundbreaking about it and therefore it makes no sense to me that it received the Golden Lion at Venice film festival last year! It is of no surprise to me though - all the American awards it has already won, (like the Golden Globe), and I expect more to come, like the Academy Awards, because that's an entirely different ballgame isn't it
A last comment I'd like to make and maybe it's just because I'm a pathetic European and a big fan of European and International/Art-house cinema, but why did Ang Lee have to use the song "Perhaps or Quisaz" in the scene where Jack goes to Mexico to get laid? To me, that made a very clear reference, to two recent films containing exactly the same themes as Brokeback Mountain. One is Almodovar's Bad Education (gay love) and the other one is Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love (forbidden and unfulfilled love). But where as in the two titles just mentioned, the song is used very clever and really ad's to the characters emotions and the whole tension in the film, in Brokeback Mountain it doesn't do anything, it just seems so inappropriate and meaningless