It is propaganda for romantic love, after all.

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2006)

I admire Ang Lee, I always did, at least since the Icestorm, which is one of my favorites of all times. Ang Lee is a lot in the (movie)news right now, because of the media's self-acclaimed "oscar buzz". He always looks modest, without false pretensions and like a very nice guy. No problem here.
This movie, however, is propaganda. What is done here is to connect the promise of living a life close to the forces of nature ("natural life") with the inner forces of romantic love, which supposedly are stronger than death and of course in opposition to the trivial forces of societal prejudice. Stories about this kind of romantic love, which are in line with "human nature" and against the "unnatural social", are well known and this story is told very well here.
It gets its special drive because the lovers are men. Their love is impossible, in this time and at this place, no doubt about it, but it is not like this any longer. And here the movie becomes problematic. If this story is - as Ang Lee claims in the aforementioned interviews - more about something universal: romantic love, then it is naive at best: This kind of romantic love is not universal at all. If this is all about romantic love, that it is close to itself only in its own suspension, then I do not need it either. If the movie actually is about love between men in the 1960s/70s in the USA, then it has a lot of real historic interest, but it should not pretend to be more.
The general ennui of men who are forced to be good salesmen, who live in marriages which also could happen over the phone, who are surrounded by responsibilities and crying children, all this is not due to not living "natural" romantic love - be it between men or not. The curse under which we are forced to live nowadays is to be able to live with our romantic loves, and to witness how that extraordinary blessing turns into ashes after some years.
However, because I have such a high respect for Ang Lee's work, I do not rule out that he is right and that there is some more universal lesson in this fine piece of cinematography: that real love is about not finding fulfillment and that it is worth it.-