Influence of the Director's Background

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2011)

I have read comments by some who say that "Brokeback Mountain" is a slow and boring film with little "action". That is very much not the case. Rather, those comments may reflect the views of people who may not be aware or appreciate some of the texture associated with Asian dramatic films. However strange it may sound, "Brokeback Mountain" can be considered an "Asian" film.
As a Chinese film director who was born in Taiwan, Ang Lee's Chineseness shows through in his movies. This is true in "Brokeback Mountain." Even though, in many ways, the film seems distinctly un-Chinese, focusing on the gay relationship between two cowboys in the rugged American West. But the movie also has themes popular in Chinese cinema, like the repression of the true self in a conservative society. Movie buffs familiar with Chinese film will also note how "Brokeback Mountain" is rich in understated communication that's popular in Asian movies. There's the subtle, incremental buildup to the cowboys' love affair -- fleeting glances fraught with subsumed passion, minute gestures of heart-wrenching tenderness. In particular, Ang has employed metaphoric allusions, subtle, nuanced facial and physical expressions or vocal inflections (e.g., an eyebrow raised, a stolen glance, a longing look, or avoidance of eye contact hiding behind hats, a lingering touch, or a pregnant pause) to convey unsaid or unsay-able thoughts or emotions as a projection of repression.
Even though unsaid or conveyed indirectly, an observant viewer will understand completely the emotions and feelings that are being communicated. That is why this film needs to be viewed more than once. As many viewers have noticed and commented, one gains deeper appreciation of the story and the details of the matrix of relationships between and among the principal characters - Jack, Ennis, Alma, and Lureen - and those around them through the many layers and subtle details of this film. Hence, if one looks more closely one will see much more than meets the eye initially.
To quote William Leung: Ang Lee is "a literalist who favors the adaptation of literary fictions, and invariably he stays faithful to his source material. On top of this, Lee's approach to filmmaking is conspicuously un-postmodernist, being character-plot oriented rather than style-polemic oriented. Lee favors a traditional humanist and social-realist approach to storytelling, so much so that to describe him as a classical filmmaker would strike most people as apt." Journal of Film and Video 60.1 (2008) 23-42.