An observation

Rating: 10/10 (28 February 2006)

It is perhaps in the nature of IMDb that even the best movie is likely to be given poor reviews and very low votes by some. I have seen that for many good films, but for Brokeback Mountain, a film which is critically acclaimed and widely lauded, this effect is particularly striking. It is often useful to look at the hostile as well as the favourable reviews in order to get a more rounded view of the film, but in the case of Brokeback Mountain, it is worth looking more closely at the hostile ones to see what is happening. The bad reviews generally are of the two following types -
1) Complaints that the movie is too slow and boring, not enough characterisation of the main or minor characters, too few words spoken, etc. It is perhaps unfortunate that "slow and boring" is always the criticisms that any thoughtful movie is likely to attract, some people simply won't make any effort to understand a movie that doesn't have constant action or flashy cgi. They may also expect everything to be explicit spelt out so they don't need to work out what is happening by themselves. Brokeback Mountain is therefore unsatisfactory for them, it being largely about the private emotional lives of the protagonists, much of which is left unspoken. However, for those who are more thoughtful, they will find a beautiful story, simple yet complex, sparsely told yet highly emotional in its effect.
2) People who haven't seen the movie but nevertheless will insist on pronouncing on its (or rather lack of) worthiness. Some of them even pretended to have seen it, but the errors in their reviews showed that all they did was to read other similarly ignorant reviews. Some probably even pretended to be what they are not - a couple of gay cowboys turned up one immediately after another to trash the film (one of these self-described gay cowboy even derided it as gay propaganda with little coherent explanation why it is so), how likely is that? These reviews are often stupid and dishonest, they don't make the slightly sense to anyone who had actually seen and understood the film. Some of these people will say that the film is "average" or "OK", but then it give a 1 out of 10? Do they understand what "average" means?
Brokeback Mountain is by no means the perfect film, there are parts which I find unsatisfactory, either I find these parts not well-acted (Cassie, for example, overacted with her huge drops of tears in her last scene when Heath Ledger gave a perfectly restrained performance in the same scene that still managed to show his anguish and desolation), or I thought perhaps could been done differently or better. However, it is not possible to give it a vote 9.5, so a 10 it will be, if only to do my little bit to counter those dishonest people who voted out of hatred and spite rather than having genuinely seen the film.