Wide skies, deep closet

Rating: 6/10 (16 September 2008)

Ang Lee's story of gay cowboys, their lives ruined by prejudice won many Oscars, and it's a sensitive treatment that shows how the way we think is governed by the environment we live in. And yet... am I the only person to find that there's something faintly ridiculous about the whole story, it's humourless solidity of terse, emotionally stilted men who turn to each other when, to be frank, it's either him or the sheep? While it's refreshing to see a movie that doesn't translate "gay" as "camp", this is a portrait of people buried so deep in the closet that they can't see even the faintest crack of light; who, as the film shows it, when they do spend time together, simply sit out under the stars not talking to each other. In some ways, the film does not so much reject myth as blend the stereotype of the western hero with with the conventionally incompatible idea of homosexuality. Real life can hurt, but it's rarely this solemn; and the plot goes nowhere after the premise is established. None of this makes 'Brokeback Mountain' a bad movie; but it is strainingly earnest at times.