A meritorious subject does not guarantee a meritorious film

Rating: 3/10 (13 August 2009)

Like most people who saw "Brokeback Mountain," I came wanting to like it because I am morally involved with the subject matter. In the end, though, whatever compassion I felt for the two men came from my principles, not film itself. Their longing for each other is embedded in the screenplay, but the only reason I had to believe that they were in love was that I was told it. I never felt it.
Dealing with homosexuality as a forbidden subject accounts, to some considerable degree, for the fawning reception this film received. But a meritorious subject does not guarantee a meritorious movie. If it did, then the drab rehab movie "28 Days" would be a classic and the racist "Birth of the Nation" could not be.
While the failed marriages of the two men were convincing, their failed chemistry left me unmoved. But that wasn't the only problem, of course. Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant could be kissing in 35mm and it wouldn't overcome Ang Lee's stale direction. I'll confine myself to three main complaints: 1) the watching-paint- dry pace that makes this 2-hour movie seem longer than a 20-inning baseball game; 2) the gutless country music soundtrack, which is Santaolalla's worst work; and 3) Ledger's incoherent mumbling, for which there is never any excuse. Mumbling was one of Brando's signatures, but his artistry was such that he delivered the emotional essence.
It would be shorter to say what's right with "Brokeback": the Alberta and Wyoming locations, and Michelle Williams.
By the way, for real chemistry between men in a far more effective and important movie on the subject of homosexuality, see "Victim" (1961). The screen is never even shared by Dirk Bogarde and Peter McEnery, but the strength of their forbidden love — in England, criminal love until 1967-- is all the more powerful for including scenes explicitly addressing the tragic political and social bigotry.