Much ado about two cowboys

Rating: 3/10 (30 March 2006)

So this is finally it. The movie that moved so many critics in the world. The movie basically everybody has been talking about in the past months. The movie I have been waiting for and looking forward to seeing for three years. Just to leave the cinema with an empty feeling afterwards.
Two men who love each other are unable and scared to admit it because of the time and the society they live in. What potential stuff for a movie! Even more so because it is set in the Wild West area but presented in a natural way. Annie Proulx' short story "Brokeback Mountain" is probably the most powerful, moving, tender and beautiful tale and love story I've ever read in my life. Too bad Ang Lee turned it into a sleepy two-hour documentary of the undoubtfully stunning Canadian landscape and the forced acting of two young Hollywood actors. Because basically this is how you can sum up the film that  according to critics  should actually be able to shake our beliefs and change the world.
As for me, it just didn't reach me. Or touch me. Or move me. Maybe Jake Gyllenhaal is just too flamboyant to play a simple cowboy. Or Heath Ledger too intellectual. From time to time their faces basically scream in this movie: "Give us Shakespeare! Or Allen!" Maybe the movie is badly cut (which surprised me the most as it is made by Ang Lee)  the scenes and landscapes just are lined up one after another and somehow there is no time or space for them to set in. There is no flow. But what annoyed me most is really the obviously forced acting of the two protagonists that ruined the film. The sentence "I don't want to do it but let's just get over it" is all over the place and casts its shadows at every intimate scene those two cowboys have together. Also, often the viewer simply has the feeling to be in a theater and either watch two people perform in a hysteric, overacting way or witness two actors rehearse for their roles. Distance between a performance and the audience might be a good thing and work in a theatre but it sure is bad in a movie because I think the most important thing a film should achieve is to pull you straight into the plot and capture you so for one moment you forget about reality.
It's not about the gay aspect of the story. But this couple in love just isn't authentic enough. Or close enough. Or goddamnit human enough. Two men who work together surprisingly notice that they are attracted to each other. One day, their feelings just overwhelm them and they have sex in the first place they can find  tearing down each others' clothes, sweating, not knowing what to do and one of them simply thrusting into the other. It's all violence and energy, with one or two tender looks in their eyes but so much lust and passion. It's dirty, it's uncontrolled, it's all over the place. You can see their pain and lust in their faces, you can almost feel it. One of the best (first) love scenes I have ever seen in cinema. But what I have just described here is a scene from the gay drama "Proteus" and something you definitely won't find in "Brokeback Mountain".
Yet there were one or two strong things in this film. Stunning, powerful and moving performances by the two leading ladies  Michelle Williams' and Anne Hathaway's best work so far. The soundtrack has the most beautiful music I've ever heard in a movie and is the only thing about "Brokeback Mountain" that really deserves the buzz. And then of course the shots of the stunning Canadian landscape I've already mentioned  they breathe wilderness, freedom and freshness so you just wanna pack your bag and travel there. But what's the use in two good actresses, great music and stunning landscape if you can simply forget about the rest of the film?
My final conclusion is that this film was shot in the wrong time (it should have been thirty or forty years earlier), the wrong director (should have been a gay one or Francis Ford Coppola), the wrong (male, leading) cast (too young, too Hollywood) and simply in too big dimensions. I really wish that this story will be adapted again one day  by an independent, small, largely unknown European company, an independent, largely unknown director, with an independent, largely unknown cast. I think that would hit the tone of the novel far better than this large blockbuster something.
There have been and hopefully will be films that can shake your beliefs, change the world and some ignorant minds. Brokeback Mountain is not one of them.