lust, passion and love in the expression of the human spirit

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2006)

"Brokeback Mountain" explodes with magnificent scenery, and reminds viewers in the process that there is a bigger picture. This is not a movie about homosexuals. It is a movie about three faces of human attraction; passion, lust and love, and how the unwinding of a person's life, the unmet needs of growing up and settling down compel us to dream, even sleepwalk, or how the unwanted visions of human cruelty and deprived circumstance compel us to shrink or strike out. No. "Brokeback Mountain" is not a gay movie. And if you view it that way it's richly woven fabric of human circumstance loses the delicacy of understanding required to get what Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist mean when they each declare to the other they are not queer. Nor are they, and that's a lot to think about!
To call "Brokeback Mountain" love with a Twist is something you might get at the very end, in the final reveal when the spirit of Jack Twist recalls him as a man with an every childs' dream he could never give up. If you were or can imagine the child of divorcing parents, both of whom you loved, you begin to get it. But forget it! This is not a divorce movie, either. It's a movie from an ever emerging genre that explores psychodynamics as a matter of course or accident, though I can't speak for Ang's exact intentions. In the end, the feelings that underlie the emotions become as palpable as the aroma of herb spiced slow cooking.
As much as I might like, I cannot follow a director's career, and so cannot discuss, nor would I research in order to discuss director Ang Lee's body of work. No doubt I've seen and immensely enjoyed much of it. I cannot speak to the acting either, other than to say that they get the job done well. Oscars? Why not? There's plenty of money shots, and Ang must be pleased, but in putting this vision together, I imagine the through lines are a patchwork quilt of unrelated motivations. 'Play this scene as if you're starving men given a can of sweetened baked beans with bacon and a hack saw to open it. You each get one or the other. You can trade them, but you can't have both to yourself, and you both get to eat.' I have no idea how to rate this film on a scale of 1-10. For all its warmth, it is not sensual. It's a tedious film for me, not very entertaining, though beautifully shot, immensely informative about the human condition, and narratively layered like hand crafted mud plaster on an adobe wall, formed from the ground up and worked to uneven perfection. So, I'll say an 8 or better and not to be missed if you want to identify with the overall human condition in an unexpected way as an outsider looking in.
In 1931, Jung wrote on Western civilized man's toying with eastern philosophies of spirituality and enlightenment. "It is not a question of our imitating, or worse still, becoming missionaries for what is organically foreign, but rather a question of building up our own Western culture, which sickens with a thousand ills."
In 1974 I was instructing physical education to middle school kids. Two adolescent boys, brothers, my students were in the front seat of a pickup parked on the side of the road. The oldest was not old enough to have a license, but we didn't care. I was with the principal and another professional educator as we approached in our vehicle and caught them in our lights. We decided we'd razz them just a little because we knew 'em well enough and didn't think anything was going on that required intervention. For all we thought they were seeing whose thingy was bigger. Maybe we were. It's the metaphorical ego thing, right. So one of us shouted, "What are you doing out on a school night," and the others of us shouted, "Yeah what are you doing," knowing full well it was summer, but we were lubricated anyway. The younger brother rolled down his window and said delightfully, "Never you mind. We're doing our own business," and we older brothers didn't mind. We were all doing our own business. It was gratifying to know they were finding their own way with malice toward none and hearts light as laughter. When life works out, this is what sticks to the ribs.
If Ang Lee tells nothing else he tells us that we're all finding our own way. Ennis and Jack just desperately loved to fish is all.