Brokeback Mountain -- Spoiler

[RebelOne]

I just finished watching this movie. I cannot understand why it is supposed to be such a great film. I mean it was just a love story. Big deal. So the dude dies. I did not cry. The only good part was the fantastic mountain scenery. And I did definitely did not appreciate the scene where they killed the elk.

[Ava]

1. THANK GOD!

finally, SOMEONE here agrees with me that it's overrated! ;)

[gollygee]

2. I just watched it too

and I thought it was a pretty good movie but it wasn't *that* great. So I agree 100%. I thought the end where he went to the parents' house was the best part of the movie, but the rest of it was just good.

I was disappointed but I thought maybe it's because of all the hype - maybe my expectations were unfair?

[Kukesa]

3. "The dude dies." Oh no, you ruined it for me! nt

[JVS]

5. Well she did say spoiler

[Ekirh]

4. I thought it was good . . .

but I agree that at the core it's just a love story. I thought Good Night and Good Luck was better. Still a good movie and I enjoyed it.

The Scenery was definitely outstanding.

And it gave me the parody Brokeback to the Future ;).

[RebelOne]

6. I'm so happy that some agree with me that the movie

was over-rated. I just could not understand all the hype after seeing the movie. I mean, when was I supposed to cry? I have seen a lot sadder scenes in movies where I really did tear up.

[beyurslf]

7. I thought it was great that such a moving love story was about two men

and straight America watched it. I wanted it to win best picture but hadn't seen Crash. Just watched it today and I have to say it deserved the Oscar. That was a damn good movie.

[LostinVA]

24. Agreed -- on a personal level, I wanted BBM to win

But I really enjoyed Crash, and had no problem with it winning.

[saltpoint]

8. Just to posit an opposing notion or two, I'd say the script, adapted by

Larry McMurtry and Dianna Osana, was exquisite. From a text-editor's view, it was probably better than that. The author of the original short story, Annie Proulx, said as much. The producer, James Shamus, doesn't attach himself to projects that suck; he's a Shelley scholar and knows his scripts awfully well. The money and the talent and the brains and the energy all go to projects he and Ang Lee feel are worthy. That script alone made this film a landmark, a one-of-a-kind film.

You're not required to like it personally. But there are virtues to the project that resonate beyond pesonal taste. This film is a gleaming performance at every level, and it will be discussed in film classes for the next hundred years.

[bigwillq]

9. I think it's one of the most beautiful movies ever made.

On so many levels. I agree with your post. Every frame of that movie is perfection.

Brokeback is one of my all-time fave movies.

1. As a movie fan, all the technical aspects of the movie are amazing.
2. Because of my personal interest in the movie.


It's just a great flick, imo.

:hi:

[saltpoint]

10. Hi to you, bigwillq. Thanks for your response to the post.

The thing gleamed. The music score was from South America. The director is from Taiwan. They took a tired, dead-in-desert American genre form and made it alive again.

That Thanksgiving dinner scene was added by McMurtry and Osana and not in the original short story, but I think it's one of the best capsule glimpses of American life I've ever seen. "Sit DOWN, you ignorant son-of-a-bitch!" Jack screams at his father-in-law, who is a total horse's ass. --While the kid was trying to watch the Dallas Cowboys on the tube during the meal, and mama afraid to take sides for alienating her husband versus defying her daddy's cash flow.

What a scene.

What a film.

[bigwillq]

11. Just the whole film---

perfect.

I wanted Brokeback to win the Oscar for Best Picture so badly and not just because it was a "gay movie" but because I believe it was the best movie of the year maybe one of the best movies that has come out in recent memory.


Well I am off to bed. Take care. :hi:

[Misunderestimator]

29. And I agree with you. One of the most beautiful films every made.

:thumbsup:

[LostinVA]

25. The script adaption was truly superb -- agreed

And, the script itself was one of THE best I have ever read -- and I read alot of them.

[saltpoint]

12. Andrew Holleran's piece on BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is my favorite so

far, because he points out in his review that the story is about What Might Have Been, about living a life that is not the life you truly want to, or need to, live.

The wind-blasted horizon of Wyoming of 1963 is a perfect setting for that sentiment. Ennis and Jack cannot be their true selves unless they're on Brokeback Mountain, and they are among the most isolated Americans of their day. Cowboys look down on sheepherding, and cowboy shepherds aren't in the same prestigious cowboy league as rodeo champs. Neither Ennis nor Jack are able to articulate even the barest emotion without struggling to speak. The times they live in will not permit a gay relationship openly.

The author of the original short story, Annie Proulx, said the film brought her story to life. It is one of the rare times when the film surpasses the book in scope and depth and impact.

[Liberal Veteran]

13. Guess you have to be able to empathize with how terrible...

....it is to live in a society that would just as soon you didn't exist or would kill you for existing.

It wasn't "just a love story". There was a real emotional depth to the main characters who were victims of rules they had no part in creating.

[saltpoint]

15. Damn, Liberal Veteran. That is a BINGO. You nailed it and you nailed it`

good.

What a good job that film did showing exactly what you say it's about.

I still can't get over how much of my country was encapsulated in that Thanksgiving dinnertime scene. It just knocked me out.

[Liberal Veteran]

18. What was interesting is that there were no real villains among the main

....characters.

Yeah they all said angry and hurtful things, but it seemed like real people reacting to real pain.

[saltpoint]

19. True. I wonder if some of the ambiguity some people had about the

film was partly due to that.

In traditional westerns, there's usually a bad guy. Here, just as you say, there were only real people caught up in each other's lives.

[LostinVA]

26. Great way to put it

[JCMach1]

14. About a man who has so trapped himself and is any many ways

incapable of articulating anything beyond the simple basics of life... Some who doesn't truly understand themself and certainly can't express it...

That can be difficult to watch at times. It was a brilliant screenplay with really good acting and a good movie...

[saltpoint]

16. Agreed. One review I read said that the name 'Ennis' means 'island,'

and Ennis was unto himself, bereft, except for that one week a year up on Brokeback Mountain.

[Liberal Veteran]

17. It was somewhat subtle too.

There was a great deal of depth in that movie and it didn't bother with dropping an anvil on your head to show it. Ennis's inner battle, his wife's pain, Jack's attempts to carve out a life with a person who is damaged, desperately afraid to express himself, and yet truly loves him is tragic.

[saltpoint]

20. I thought the guy who played Jack's father at the end, and the woman

who played his mother, were perfect. The mother knows Ennis needs to go upstairs to visit Jack's room. The father sits at the table and berates his dead son.

If that isn't a really well-conceived piece of writing and story-telling, I don't know what is. That gives me a much broader appreciation of how growing up might have been for Jack Twist.

[saltpoint]

21. In fact, one of the major subthemes of the story is about fathers, and

how not to be one.

Ennis' older sibling raised him when his father died in an accident.

Jack's father was an unfeeling bigot.

Ennis and Jack both struggle to be husbands and dads despite their annual week together on the mountain.

And Jack's father-in-law was all deal and no heart. The scene at the Thanksgiving table was one of the best-written & acted scenes I've seen in a film.

[CBHagman]

22. One thing I noticed...

I saw the movie a couple of weeks ago and read Annie Proulx's short story just a few days ago. If you can get a copy of the story and read it, I'd recommend it. The closing sentence was one I had to read over and over again.

Getting back to the movie interpretation, there was a scene in the movie (though not in the short story) that suggested to me that Ennis's heart was starting to emerge. There's this moment when his elder daughter asks him to come to her wedding, and from the way he begins his answer, you think he's not going to show up, that he's going to let her down again, that he's going to give work as an excuse...and then he surprises her, the audience, and maybe even himself by suggesting that he won't let work stand in his way this time.

[saltpoint]

23. Absolutely right. He becomes her father at that point, finally earning

the adoration she's shown him all along.

A beautiful moment. If the society Ennis lived in would not sanction his heart's desire, he would nevertheless sanction his daughter's, and it is a beautiful scene.

I did read Annie Proulx's short story, and strong as it was, I liked McMurty & Osana's screenplay adoption awfully well.

Ang Lee doesn't owe me anything after BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. He's made history with this film, and I am thrilled with the present he's given us.

[LostinVA]

28. I agree about the last sentence...

That, and the last part of Forster's "Maurice" always gets me -- when the writer talks about Clive and his last days...

[Midlodemocrat]

27. I loved it. And I cried. I can't imagine the depth of the sorrow

those two men experienced in being denied their ability to be with the one they love. It is so crushingly sad to me that this is still an issue. It's love, people, love. How can that be bad in any sense?

[mduffy31]

30. Thanks

When I saw the movie I was struck about how average it was. I also thought it was way overrated. Now I don't fell alone. Is it safe to say that the movie isn't the greatest thing always without being branded as homophobic?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=210&topic_id=12263&mesg_id=12263

[gollygee]

31. So I watched it again

because I thought maybe I had unrealistic expectations or something the first time.

I think one problem is that I had heard a spoiler - that Jack dies - and that would have had a huge emotional impact but of course I was just waiting for that to happen.

I did like it a lot better the second time and I appreciated Heath Ledger's acting a lot more too. I felt like they hadn't really shown the two falling in love, but when I saw it the second time, the scene where they had to go down from the mountain a month early and Ennis didn't want to go made more sense to me. I "got it" at that point, and that's the piece I missed the first time. I was a bit distracted the first time - I got a call from my mom and a call from my sister-in-law while I was watching it - and I just didn't quite catch that part completely. That would have been a benefit of seeing it in the theater - no distractions.