The most genuine loves story to be produced in many years

Rating: 10/10 (27 December 2005)

Wow! This love story blew me away. It is a story for everyone. What it tells us us that you cannot help whom you love. Sometimes obstacles are placed Romeo and Juliet style by family, by society, or by our own fears and inhibitions. But here we learn that love is well worth fighting for, no matter what form it takes. All too often we wait until it is too late to act. We plan to travel when we retire. We plan to get married when we are older. We plan and plan and plan. But we don't LIVE. We don't ACT. As Shakespeare has a character tell us in Julius Caesar, "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at th4e flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in misery.We must take the current wen it serves or lose our ventures."
This warning shows anyone who would see that anything worth having is worth risking all at the right moment. Love is all too often the victim of our hesitation.
NOTE: I am so disappointed at all the comments from gay men who think the film breaks no ground because it does not show more open affection/sex/whatever or because it does not support their gay agenda. A big part of he success of this effort will be in what it does not say or do.
There are too many in-your-face gay films that have already done more harm than good in chipping away at homophobia. Some people don't want to be confronted so directly with alternative lifestyles. And to apply today's sophistication to a situation that begins and ends 20 to 40 years ago, when attitudes and fears were much more difficultly to confront is a great mistake. Ang Lee is already being accused by the "Christian" reviewers of promoting "Hollywood's gay agenda." To the contrary, he is doing just the right thing to show how universal love and loss are.
Far from promoting such an agenda, his effort shows clearly that whether or not one approves of "love" between two people, one must concede that love and loss take their toll on anyone who feels one and suffers the other. This message is far more likely to evoke sympathy from unlikely audience members than a few minutes of explicit hay rolling and intimate kisses. For that, perhaps viewers should stick to the Logo Channel.