I'm Coming Out of the Closet

Rating: 1/10 (23 September 2015)

After ten years of hating this movie but not being willing to admit it, I'm finally coming clean.
This movie leaves an emotional vacuum when you've watched it. Not because of the ending: that was true to the original in the novella. But all you will remember from watching this film is wide open spaces, literal or metaphorical. And I can read the National Geographic if I want landscape.
There is more genuine love between men in non-gay movies than I felt in this supposedly gay one. Pick any war story and you'll see more intense love between soldiers than I felt from this. Think Hannibal, with Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy. Hannibal and Will played out a complex and heartbreaking bromance on screen more believable than this supposedly gay story.
The romance in BBM just doesn't work. It's the kind of movie that has to rely on one kiss (probably endlessly replayed on loop) for its emotional connection.
It seems a shame that so much money and effort and talent was spent on this when there are so many better books they could have chosen. Annie Proux's novella was sparse, bleak, bitter and very short. Ennis and Jack's relationship in the movie is sparse, bleak, bitter and very short. All the rest is photography. This is not a movie I'd bother to watch again, so that's a 1 star in my book.