Relationships

Rating: 6/10 (18 April 2007)

Based on Brokeback and Crouching Tiger I believe Lee is better showing representational relationships than the real thing. Westerns, gangster movies, teenage love films, have used this method for years to bypass building stories. Viewers assume the lone cowboy and rancher girl will fall in love, the hard-bitten gangster moll has a heart of gold, etc. Lee wants us to assume facts about the marriages of the two cowboys but gives us little more than cliché. Neither marriage succeeded as a relationship I could believe in and that removed the reality of the cowboy's love for each other. Did these guys really love anyone? It might have been better to make their meetings strictly sexual trysts (as they were portrayed when in action) and skip the love angle because I couldn't figure out if they loved each other or loved the sex or loved being loners and used that to get out of facing the world, another unexplored angle. A pet peeve: reaction shots to show us what to think about what is going on. Such shots tell me the director believes that the characters and script need help, as in the closeup of the daughter's face toward the end of the film displaying adoration of her father. If she had shown a fraction of understanding of him, empathy, even sympathy, it might have worked, but why use that shot at all? Let us think what we think. Ah well, that's Hollywood.