** SPOILER** A tragic figure and a conformist

Rating: 7/10 (15 March 2006)

Shortly after watching Brokeback I happened to rent the Celluloid Closet, the documentary about Hollywood's treatment of the subject of homosexuality. For years homosexuals were misrepresented in film as sissies, outcasts, mentality ill and self-loathing people who are ashamed of their "problem." They generally met a tragic end-death by the town or community or suicide. (Suddenly, Last Summer and the Children's Hour) So why is Brokeback such a bold and different film? How is Hollywood treating the love between two men any differently in the new millennium? When Alma confronts Ennis about his fishing trips she never openly says she knows he was gay or was sleeping around with Jack. The subject is skirted as it was in old films. Jack ends up as the tragic figure who dies at the hands of a homophobic mob. He, unlike Jack, was willing to risk it all in order to be with Ennis. Jack was also the one searching for the love of another man when Ennis wouldn't run off with him. Is death punishment for Jack's homosexuality? Ennis, on the other hand conformed to the standards of society and lived to see his girls grow and marry. Ennis dated another woman and never slept with another man other than Jack. The movie ends with him as a father figure and not as a man who lost the love of his life to the homophobia he feared since childhood. How has Brokeback treated homosexuality any differently than the old Hollywood films?