The now-notorious movie Brokeback Mountain is a prime example of why a piece of work should not be considered great simply because it is provocative. The film is one of the first American films of its kind, meaning a homosexual love story between two men, but more importantly it is the first major Hollywood film with two star actors as gay lovers. That being said, Brokeback Mountain is no different than any other so-called “chick flick” aside from the glaring lack of “chicks” involved in the romance. As an artistic piece, this film breaks no new ground, offers very slow plot development, does not captivate a critical audience, and is overall a poorly constructed work.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for a mild, partially empathetic tearjerker, this is right up your alley. In this overly politically-correct society, it was inevitable for a homosexual love story of this scale to be produced eventually. Director Ang Lee should never have been the one to make such a film; who decided that a man of Hulk and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame should be the one to direct the first major male-male love story in Hollywood history? Lee, himself, seems uncomfortable by the idea of two men having sex, as demonstrated by the incredibly awkward, random and spontaneous initial sex scene, which takes place on a tent on Brokeback Mountain.
On that note, the pretentious nature of this film is almost insulting. Director Ang Lee and stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger seem as though they only agreed to do the film so they could reap the financial benefits of its controversial nature. With no intent of disparaging the character of any of these individuals, the enormous career boost that a project like this offers is too much to turn down, as long as you can stomach the idea of doing sex scenes with another man. If you think I am off-base on this assessment, imagine you knew nothing of this movie. Pretend you had never heard of Brokeback Mountain; pretend you were oblivious to the outrageous hype of this film; pretend you were 100% ignorant of the implications of the title and knew of nothing aside from what you saw as the film progressed. How confused would you have been by that first sex scene?
Despite my harsh criticism of this movie, I am very pleased that a film of this significance revolving around the concept of homosexuality has been produced. I believe it was very much a necessary step in our society, though it should have been drastically more cinematically captivating. My biggest regret is how pitifully this movie addressed the ‘issue” of homosexuality. The phrase “cop-out” comes to mind. The apparent goal of Ang Lee was to make it so it just seemed like another forbidden romance story, with the emphasis on forbidden, as opposed to homosexuality. This is a noble effort, but poorly executed.
The biggest symbol is the movie is Heath Ledger’s shirt, which was left on Brokeback Mountain. Ignoring for a moment how basic and uncreative this metaphor is, it is also rather hastily placed. Ledger’s character mentions after the first summer on the mountain that he was upset he had left his shirt. The viewer then gets no mention of the shirt until almost two hours later, when Gyllenhaal’s character has died and Ledger goes to visit Gyllenhaal’s parents. He finds the shirt in Gyllenhaal’s closet, takes it with him and hangs it in his own closet. In doing this, he places one of Gyllenhaal’s shirts inside of his own shirt, representing Gyllenhaal’s eternal existence in Ledger’s heart. This whole emotional scene takes about twenty minutes, with a brief intermission of Ledger speaking with his daughter, and it has no reason to take this much time.
In my opinion, the ending was the worst part of the whole film. Lee takes a scene that should be heartfelt but timely and drags it through puddles of tears and nonsense. The final scene should not have taken more than five to six minutes at the most, and it lasts well over fifteen mind-numbing minutes. At this point, the whole audience is fully aware of the emotional context of the film, we do not need an additional fifteen minutes of pure tear-jerking fluff. But then again, the vast majority of this film seems to be tear-jerking fluff; there is overall very little substance to the movie. It was a noble idea, to make a movie of this nature. However, Ang Lee delivered a monster letdown, even for those with low expectations.
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