A blue-jean bodice-ripper

Rating: 6/10 (18 July 2006)

I don't know what it was I was expecting in this film, but what I got sure was different. It started pretty quickly, too, with the first sex scene in the tent. To begin with, the sex happened way too quickly given who these guys were and what this kind of sex meant in those days. It was so sudden that I just guffawed. It was a big, Huh? There was tremendous social pressure against it. Two men could certainly fall in love and have sex, happened all the time, however, under the circumstances given by the movie, it was just too quick. There wasn't the kind or lead-up that you would expect. I wanted more character development. I needed to see what drove both these men to suddenly indulge in what was a forbidden love in that time and place especially. This wasn't after all, New York or San Francisco. While Jack Twist seems to have always been the truly "gay" one of the two, he would have been more careful about going after Ennis like that. A guy could get killed. Merely running around a campfire, having a few conversations, and then the guys are yanking each other's clothes off? I can't buy it.
The movie was choppy. It was hard to follow the scent since the two guys lived far apart and needed to meet up a few times a year for their trysts. And little or no discussion of what all this did to their home lives, their children and wives. It was incredibly selfish and self-involved. Like somehow this was sacred, the love that is above all others. It was guilt-free which is complete nonsense to me. Ennis does mention that once, but truly, the pain that these two men were causing other people seemed to mean little or nothing to them. It made the characters seem extremely cold, selfish men. Yet I believe it was the director's desire that we should be completely forgiving of any shortcomings because this was just too big to be concerned with little things like other people's pain. The single, final confrontation between Luann and Ennis, long after they have divorced, was the one nod to the terrible selfishness and cruelty Ennis visited upon his wife and family. And even then it is as if Ennis never really gets it. He's incredibly dumb.
Also, I found the film to be quite melodramatic. In a sense, it is a bodice (Pendleton?)-ripper, an overripe romance novel kind of love story. No one ever discussed this film in those terms with me. Either people hadn't seen it or they just thought it was the best movie EVER (or at least since Dances With Wolves). But really, this movie falls into a genre which is better described as a chick flick. I understand now why women seem to be the ones who just "adore" this film. Go take a look at the Brokeback Mountain IMDb boards. It's to swoon over! Seen in that light, I better understood what it was people were feeling. The film takes itself way too seriously, too. There is barely a glimpse of humor in it. I felt that the director and writers, good as they are, felt they were making something very important, something that was so special that it needed to be treated in an almost hallowed way. Once you sanctify something you have removed the humanity from it. Luckily, the last act stepped back a bit from that. Ennis's solo trip to find out about Jack's life and death was the best part of the film for me.
There was one thing in particular that I found quite jarring, however, when Anne Hathaway tells Ennis about how Jack died. The director suddenly stuck a flash insert into the film that showed Jack being beaten to death by two men. This was a cheat. Did this actually happen? Is this Ennis's imagination (that doesn't ring true)? Why is that there? The reason given by Hathaway's character was perfectly good enough. It was banal, as it should have been. No drama, just a stupid accident. I didn't read Proulx's story, but I think she meant that he did die in a stupid tire-changing accident. The best revelations in the last act are how Jack Twist's father talks about how his son kept dreaming of bringing someone up to the ranch and setting up a household there and bringing the ranch back up to speed again. And the final scene with Ennis arranging Jack's shirt and jacket on the hanger was beautiful. Very touching. Too bad the film itself didn't have more of that kind of poignancy in it.