Retaliation!

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2006)

The wearisome Republican piquancy connected to this film (I quote "This is what happens when you take the last vestige of American Masculinity i.e. the cowboy, and you turn him into a gay guy") and many viewers' over-opinionated views on this film (views which obviously extend past Brokeback Mountain and into the real world) has forced me to write in retaliation!
Pardoning all those to whom it does not concern, but this is the reason why the vast majority of Americans are regarded as being culturally ignorant by Europeans. I am from London, I am NOT gay, I saw Brokeback Mountain recently and not once did it enter my mind that this film was, quote "a direct attack on Mid-West values" unquote, in fact I saw it as quite the opposite - a powerful reminder of the physical and psychological damage suffered by homosexuals during a period of widespread narrow-minded discrimination. After reading many a relentless tirade I realised that there was not one comment posted by these hostile right-wingers that explored the issues put forth by Ang Lee in the film, hence, I think that many have completely missed Ang Lee's intention. He was implying that homosexuality was by no means commonplace or readily accepted by America's Mid-West, in fact, the antithesis of homosexuality, homophobia, was so prevalent there that if you were a gay man living in the Mid-West during the early 1960's and you got caught "being gay" then you were most probably going to get murdered. Did you not notice this major point whilst watching the film?
An extremely simplistic summary of the film would be this: It is a film about two gay men who, in the face of prejudice and oppression, fall in love, but ultimately their relationship goes nowhere because one of them is too scared to pursue it due to the fact that he vividly remembers seeing the mutilated corpses of two men when he was a child - both were tortured to death for being homosexual, and he knows that the relationship could cost him his life. The unthinkable happens and his lover is killed, supposedly in a freak accident, but we suspect it was at the merciless hands of the despotic bigots that roam the valleys! The man is left to wallow in his eternal misery and regret, wishing that he had followed his heart. The performances are brilliant, the back-drop is formidable and the direction is Ang Lee at his most subtle and thought-provoking best! If you are not a brainless fascist and you enjoy intelligent and emotional cinematic masterpieces then you will love this film.