A beautiful lie

Rating: 5/10 (22 January 2006)

Great acting, grand scenery, good writing. A sure lock for Best Picture, and a significant event in movie history. These, and more, I grant Brokeback Mountain. What I want to get at, though, is why I am not joining its legion of revelers. I do not, as so many here, flatter myself for my tolerance and fall all over myself to laud it.
Clearly, many find the film deeply moving and identify strongly with its characters and with the dilemma at its heart. We may further debate its merits and discuss its implications, and I applaud the movie for engendering thoughtful conversation about, and consideration of, sexuality and society. It deserves more than mere approval or dismissal. But in reviewing it, I cannot avoid the central conceit. So I'll cut to the chase:
The relationship never moves beyond its passionate beginnings. Even if we assume that it could have if given the chance, it's an empty dream. Jack tells Ennis, "It could always be like this," but that is clearly a delusion; what were for them the halcyon days of Brokeback Mountain cannot be repeated, much less lived indefinitely. No mature couple, be they gay or straight, can remain as they were at the start.
Singularity— an existence apart, seemingly, from obligation and constraint —is, it is clear, integral to the appeal of any illicit affair. We may blame society, fault forces beyond their control that two men in love cannot freely pursue, and allow to develop, their passion. But the movie also asks us to lament that Jack and Ennis never get to return, metaphorically, to Brokeback Mountain— when that haven doesn't really exist at all.
It is a constant challenge to live with lasting connection, keep promises, and choose the welfare of others over one's own. To do so is also frequently incompatible with, but ultimately more rewarding than, the pursuit of one's own gratification. Jack and Ennis repeatedly deceive their loved ones— including each other —and selfishly chase after their own fulfillment, and yet the movie has less sympathy for their responsibilities as employees, husbands, and fathers than it does for their affair.
I believe that their affair is immoral, and would be still if between a man and a woman (of course, in that case it wouldn't be as notable a movie). While I sympathized with the characters and admired the artistry of the film, I am not moved to mourn the consequences of romantic folly. (For this reason, I also find movies like The Bridges of Madison County, The English Patient, and Titanic fundamentally flawed. ) Romance and sex are not the only components of love.
Brokeback Mountain shows the futility of life lived in denial and deception, but assumes that embracing and affirming one's passion is by definition, if not without consequence, more laudable than obligation and restraint. That's an assumption I don't share.