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Marlboro Men Acting Funny
Well, Loose Canon promised you her review of "Brokeback Mountain," the new gay love story that is tout la rage--and here it is.
Where to begin? The outdoor scenery is gorgeous, I loved the sheep (Jack Twist and the monosyllabic Ennis Del Mar are actually shepherds, not cowboys), and the movie did some interesting things aesthetically: namely, it made every setting but Brokeback Mountain ugly, but in an aesthetic way. Most of the people--Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) excepted--were also ugly in an aesthetic way. It would be hard to make Ledger and Gyllenhaal ugly, but Ledger's Ennis, played with all the verve of a sack of potatoes, was so lethargic that it made you wonder if Jack wasn't really a necrophiliac.
My colleague Charlotte Allen and I have been predicting that "Brokeback Mountain" is this year's "Million Dollar Baby," a flick designed to poke middle America in the eye. Like MDB, Brokeback, already nominated for seven Golden Globes, will walk away with top prizes Oscar night, even if--as I predict--it is a box office disaster--just like MDB.
Overall, the analogy works, but "Million Dollar Baby" and "Brokeneck Mountain" are not peas in a pod--Brokeback is less obviously preachy, which is a relief (more on that from the New York Times' Frank Rich in a minute). "Million Dollar Baby" is nihilistic. So, last year's MDB was tragedy, and this year's is farce.
Yes, "Brokeback Mountain" has already been a skit on Saturday Night Live, with Alec Baldwin and Will Forte as two gold prospectors who fall for each other, tumbling together and sniffing each other's longjohns. It kills me that I missed Nathan Lane's parody on the Today Show: "I can't quit you, Katie." For all the movie's portentousness, gay Marlboro men, who don't remove their sweat-stained cowboy hats even when they are otherwise naked as jay birds, are intrinsically funny.
But the pillars of the intellectual elite don't see the humor. Not getting the big fat joke, Frank Rich of the New York Times writes "Two Gay Cowpokes Hit a Home Run"):
Well, no, "Brokeback" was never unlikely for an Oscar--it was always going to get the nod from the Academy, and the Golden Globe nomination comes as no surprise. Folks like Rich are ecstatic that only two years after a law against sodomy was struck down, this movie is being made. For them, "Brokeback," strikes at traditional values.
Why are people so ugly in the movie? Well, that is what people in the rest of the country look like to sophisticates who make movies: ugly. Jack's wife ends up looking like Annette Funicello times ten, with blond hair and a cigarette. (By the way, there is plenty of sex with wives, too, though this is not a movie for fans of the missionary position.) There is also a subtheme that gays frequently are killed in America, though that might have surprised my lesbian aunt, Willie Johnson, who wore men's clothes on the streets of Natchez in the 1920s.
Both Rich and I saw the movie in packed theatres: The audience where I saw it was an almost totally gay one, so eager to see the movie that they had come to a 4 o'clock showing on a Monday. I couldn't help but notice the sly and unbecoming laughter when Ennis' wife sees the men kissing. But I started laughing when she uttered her now famous line: You wasn't fishing up there, or something similar. Unlike Rich, who does cite some impressive early box office figures, I predict that this movie will become mostly a film that attracts gay audiences.
Frank Rich adds:
The Hollywood/New York pseudo-sophisticates are raving about "Brokeback" for the very same reason they are denigrating The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Narnia upholds civilization, Brokeback seeks to undermine it. That is why the pathetic U.S. Catholic Conference's review ("As the Catholic Church makes a distinction between homosexual orientation and activity, Ennis and Jack's continuing physical relationship is morally problematic. The adulterous nature of their affair is another hot-button issue....") is so gutlessly problematic. But, really, the joke's on them.
Where to begin? The outdoor scenery is gorgeous, I loved the sheep (Jack Twist and the monosyllabic Ennis Del Mar are actually shepherds, not cowboys), and the movie did some interesting things aesthetically: namely, it made every setting but Brokeback Mountain ugly, but in an aesthetic way. Most of the people--Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) excepted--were also ugly in an aesthetic way. It would be hard to make Ledger and Gyllenhaal ugly, but Ledger's Ennis, played with all the verve of a sack of potatoes, was so lethargic that it made you wonder if Jack wasn't really a necrophiliac.
My colleague Charlotte Allen and I have been predicting that "Brokeback Mountain" is this year's "Million Dollar Baby," a flick designed to poke middle America in the eye. Like MDB, Brokeback, already nominated for seven Golden Globes, will walk away with top prizes Oscar night, even if--as I predict--it is a box office disaster--just like MDB.
Overall, the analogy works, but "Million Dollar Baby" and "Brokeneck Mountain" are not peas in a pod--Brokeback is less obviously preachy, which is a relief (more on that from the New York Times' Frank Rich in a minute). "Million Dollar Baby" is nihilistic. So, last year's MDB was tragedy, and this year's is farce.
Yes, "Brokeback Mountain" has already been a skit on Saturday Night Live, with Alec Baldwin and Will Forte as two gold prospectors who fall for each other, tumbling together and sniffing each other's longjohns. It kills me that I missed Nathan Lane's parody on the Today Show: "I can't quit you, Katie." For all the movie's portentousness, gay Marlboro men, who don't remove their sweat-stained cowboy hats even when they are otherwise naked as jay birds, are intrinsically funny.
But the pillars of the intellectual elite don't see the humor. Not getting the big fat joke, Frank Rich of the New York Times writes "Two Gay Cowpokes Hit a Home Run"):
What if they held a culture war and no one fired a shot? That's the compelling tale of 'Brokeback Mountain.' Here is a heavily promoted American movie depicting two men having sex - the precise sex act that was still a crime in some states until the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws just two and a half years ago - but there is no controversy, no Fox News tar and feathering, no roar from the religious right. 'Brokeback Mountain' has instead become the unlikely Oscar favorite, propelled by its bicoastal sweep of critics' awards, by its unexpected dominance of the far less highfalutin Golden Globes and, perhaps most of all, by the lure of a gold rush. Last weekend it opened to the highest per-screen average of any movie this year."
Well, no, "Brokeback" was never unlikely for an Oscar--it was always going to get the nod from the Academy, and the Golden Globe nomination comes as no surprise. Folks like Rich are ecstatic that only two years after a law against sodomy was struck down, this movie is being made. For them, "Brokeback," strikes at traditional values.
Why are people so ugly in the movie? Well, that is what people in the rest of the country look like to sophisticates who make movies: ugly. Jack's wife ends up looking like Annette Funicello times ten, with blond hair and a cigarette. (By the way, there is plenty of sex with wives, too, though this is not a movie for fans of the missionary position.) There is also a subtheme that gays frequently are killed in America, though that might have surprised my lesbian aunt, Willie Johnson, who wore men's clothes on the streets of Natchez in the 1920s.
Both Rich and I saw the movie in packed theatres: The audience where I saw it was an almost totally gay one, so eager to see the movie that they had come to a 4 o'clock showing on a Monday. I couldn't help but notice the sly and unbecoming laughter when Ennis' wife sees the men kissing. But I started laughing when she uttered her now famous line: You wasn't fishing up there, or something similar. Unlike Rich, who does cite some impressive early box office figures, I predict that this movie will become mostly a film that attracts gay audiences.
Frank Rich adds:
In the packed theater where I caught 'Brokeback Mountain,' the trailers included a National Guard recruitment spiel, and the audience was demographically all over the map. The culture is seeking out this movie not just because it is a powerful, four-hankie account of a doomed love affair and is beautifully acted by everyone, starting with the riveting Heath Ledger. The X factor is that the film delivers a story previously untold by A-list Hollywood. It's a story America may be more than ready to hear a year after its president cynically flogged a legally superfluous (and unpassable) constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage for the sole purpose of whipping up the basest hostilities of his electoral base.
By coincidence, 'Brokeback Mountain,' a movie that is all the more subversive for having no overt politics, is a rebuke and antidote to that sordid episode. Whether it proves a movie for the ages or as transient as 'Love Story,' it is a landmark in the troubled history of America's relationship to homosexuality.
The Hollywood/New York pseudo-sophisticates are raving about "Brokeback" for the very same reason they are denigrating The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Narnia upholds civilization, Brokeback seeks to undermine it. That is why the pathetic U.S. Catholic Conference's review ("As the Catholic Church makes a distinction between homosexual orientation and activity, Ennis and Jack's continuing physical relationship is morally problematic. The adulterous nature of their affair is another hot-button issue....") is so gutlessly problematic. But, really, the joke's on them.
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