September 30, 2005

A second viewing of a film tends to wash some of the icing off of the cupcake. That can be good or bad, depending on whether you like a lot of frosting or if you want to taste the cake beneath. Sometimes the frosting distracts from baker's flaws, sometimes it distracts from the quality of the cake. But that first shock of the first bite is gone and another step toward a greater perspective is usually achieved.

I returned to Brokeback Mountain on Thursday. And the movie was different for me. I wish I could say that I fell in love with it the way I did on a second viewing of Breakfast on Pluto (which makes me want a third viewing) or as Walk The Line grew on me on progressive viewings (I look forward to my fourth). This was not the case with Brokeback. In some areas, I was more engaged. In others, even less than the first time around.

Of course, the joyous experience of first viewing is sacred to me, so if you haven't seen the film or you aren't one of those people who just doesn't care to wait, it is time to save this URL for a post-Brokeback day and to go look at MCN or ESPN or whatever URL floats your boat.

Last warning…

Okay…

The more time spent on Brokeback Mountain, the less the issue of homosexuality is at its center. In so many ways, the story is far more conventional than revolutionary. At its heart, it is a story about one man's first love and another man who finds someone who, it seems, fulfills his sexual desires and personal subtext better than anyone else. The silent man feels so deeply and the talker is just loving the one he is with.

Others have described the film as a great love that becomes the story of a great romantic tragedy. I'm still not anywhere near that camp. What really struck me this time through was that if these two men had ever gotten together, it would have been a far greater tragedy, as Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack would surely have gotten bored and left Heath Ledger's Ennis within a year or so. I'm not saying that this relationship was nothing but sex for Jack, but he is not a character about forever. The thrice a year get-togethers and Jack's eventual death allows him to be James Dean or Marilyn Monroe… better remembered and loved than a longer life would likely have earned.

Ironically, the last 15 minutes or so, after Jack has died and Ennis follows his trail, is the best part of the film. The last sequence in which Ennis goes to see Jack's parents is the best sequence of the film. In those few minutes, all of the issues that were meant to be at the heart of this story are played out in the most subtle and beautiful of ways. The mother knows everything and loves her son no matter what. The father can't even allow himself to admit what he absolutely knows in his gut. Ennis still pines for the moments on the mountain with someone who wanted him without questions, without judgment.

I suppose that one of the big problems for me is that Jack makes no demands of anyone, least of all himself.

Jack is clearly gay from the very start of the film. The inference that his disapproving father pushed him away from home is clear. The lust in his eyes from the beginning is obvious. And once he has drawn Ennis into their first sexual encounter, it seems to me that Ennis' deep compelling feelings are not about the sex or about loving a man instead of a woman, but very specifically Jack and first love.

There is no evidence in the film that Ennis has any romantic interest in any men other than Jack. And for years, it seems, well into the time where he knows that he is spending weeks every year going off and having sex with Jack, he has a healthy sexual relationship with his wife. There is a scene where he flips her over, but there is no clear read available there. He does not seem to demand anal sex of her. And my sense, on second reflection, is that he was simply trying to recreate, in a very sweet way (albeit unknown to his wife), the thrill of his first encounter with Jack.

On the flip side, Jack's relationship with his wife is initially very much like his relationship with Ennis. She is the "top." She is in control. And interestingly, we never learn how or why the lust goes out of their relationship. It could well be that it doesn't go south until he starts a regular relationship with someone from his community. And again, the existence of that relationship depoliticizes the fear that at first glance seems to keep these two men from being together. It is likely that relationship that got him killed and not his relationship with Ennis. And on second viewing, a disagreement between some people about how much Jack's wife knew about his murder seems clearer. I now believe that she knew nothing. She recites the facts of his death the way they came to her… just as she was told them. She needs to believe those lies because there is too deep an emotional well underneath the truth. In fact, I think that when Ennis tells her about Brokeback Mountain - an act of thoughtlessness or simple ignorance, in my opinion - that is the only time she really confronts what she knew about her husband… and then pushes it off again.

(It is minor in the big picture, but no major movie has ever done a worse job with aging make-up than on Ledger and Anne Hathaway here. Gyllenhaal is occasionally believable, occasionally not. But the other two look like they have, in his case, brown school glue in the sides of his face and in her case, bad Halloween wigs. Blech.)

I don't think a lot of the romantics in the audience are really thinking about what the movie is saying. Get over the idea that straight men are uncomfortable with gay sex… this is the story of a couple that gets together before one is due to marry, have a summer of love, and then get back together after one of them has taken on a unpleasant, poverty-stricken, heavy-lifting lifestyle. Who wouldn't want to spend a week in the woods having passionate haven't-seen-you-in-years sex with their great young summer love, here Ennis' first love? Pick an orifice! The romance with Jack is the only relief Ennis ever allows himself… the only deep indulgence.

And the couple then continues to do this every four months or so for almost 20 years. Jack gains a wife and a son, but still, the affair keeps going. And for Ennis, it is still a relief from the drudgery of his life every time he leaves. When he and his wife stop having sex, it's not because of Jack, who she knows about, but because he won't use a condom and he can't earn enough to pay for a bigger family… and this is in comparison to the earning might of a small town grocery store manager.

It's at that point that I have to argue that I am still the true romantic and anyone who really thinks this is a powerful romance has to be fairly cynical or so used to dealing with abusive relationship behavior that any glimmer of something special is to be grasped.

Jacks's real secret in this film seems to be that he really still wants his father's approval, in spite of decades of disapproval. He seems happy go lucky, but he can't get past this hole in his life. And Ennis seems to be the perfect representation of the father he wants to have had… and sexualized. Don't misread me… I am not saying that homosexuality is a choice made because of bad parenting or whatever. I am not saying that at all. But reading this particular relationship, Jack has a brooding, mumbling father and he falls for a brooding, mumbling man who is far taller and better looking.

Jack, I would say, is just trying to work through his shit… any port in a constant storm. But Ennis is sincere. Jack is his opposite number. And the woman he marries, Michelle' Williams' Alma, is not unlike Jack. She is more self-restricting, but she has a powerful energy and one scene in which she starts to use sex to manipulate a housing change that Ennis doesn't want to make, the movie very cleverly moves the family without ever pointing out that she won her case. And like Jack, when she finally knows she is not going to get what she needs, she leaves Ennis.

When he meets his third potential lover, Linda Cardellini's Cassie, a woman attracted to him is again, very much like Jack. She has an even bigger personality than Alma and you get the feeling that she would put up with quite a lot from Ennis. But she is not Jack. And what he got from Jack cannot be replicated. It as almost as though she is a mockery of his feelings for Jack. And when she says, "A woman doesn't fall in love with fun," she is throwing her truth into Ennis face, but Ennis, in fact, did fall in love with fun… the only fun he ever allowed himself.

As one gets into the relationship vortex of the film, issues like it being dangerous for men to be together in the west in the 60s, 70s, and 80s start to pale. The answer to my initial complaint of why these two never got together, regardless of dangers, was responded to in numbers with, "You are saying that it is easy to come out" or "You're not taking Matthew Sheppard into account." Neither was true. But now, it is clear to me that the reason this couple never really becomes a couple is that one of the two participants simply was never up to getting together. The choice was not made from social fear or political pressure, but rather a personal choice. Maybe Ennis knows that the relationship is best served by the time apart. Maybe the depth of emotion can only survive a week at a time.

So…

I didn't get caught up emotionally in Brokeback Mountain this time either. In the end, I think my answer is the same as it was a few weeks ago. I am just not that interested in the inaction of others. I am not closeted in any way… I don't feel restricted from living freely… and I don't pine for my former impossible loves while I am involved with someone else. (Of course, I am insecure about some things, I can't do just anything I like, and between relationships, the warm memory of loves past can warm the heart.)

My perspective on what I am not connecting with in this movie is, however, different. I hadn't really thought much about Jack being gay and Ennis simply being in love with a person who happens to be a man. I flirted with the thought, but it was not crystallized. I am more aware than Ennis tragedy is not the loss of Jack, but his inability to let anyone else in, male or female. And amazingly, the politics of being gay at that time - and B. Ruby Rich brought up Stonewall as I did, though I doubt she got it thrown in her face - are less relevant the second time around.

If Ennis was capable of being with Jack, they would have been together. And they may have lived happily or they may have split up when the banality of a life together became apparent to Jack, or they may have died tragically at the hands of a hater. But what kept them apart was not society, but Ennis' limitations… a far less romantic notion than the one many people seem to have of the film.

Amazingly, one of the other surprises of the second viewing was that homophobia was apparent, but a dangerous hatred of gay men was not. When Jack approaches a straight man by mistake at a bar, both the man and the bartender let him off the hook... they don't mock or abuse him. Even the anger of Randy Quaid's Joe Aguirre, who hired "those two deuces" to work on Brokeback Mountain, was understandable above and beyond homophobia. They did, as he points out, spend their time in the tent together instead of doing what they were paid to do and the results of their work were a disappointment. Why would he hire Jack again? He is a jerk, but a straw man as a character.

Again, I'm not saying that it wasn't dangerous for gays in Wyoming in the 60s. I'm not saying that it's not dangerous for gays in Wyoming this week. As per yesterday's column, there was a groundbreaking lawsuit that was won, and a book from that, and now a movie and there is still a wide swath of sexual harassment in the mines of Minnesota according to some who live there. But this movie is not about that reality. It is about these two very specific characters.

I saw a documentary on Logo the other night about lesbians in Toronto and Vancouver in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. They had nightclubs, but lived in fear of cops raiding them and beating or raping them. It happened often, according to those witnesses. Though one after another found a way to have their relationships… to overcome. A few days ago, that seemed to me to be a relevant counterpoint to Brokeback Mountain. No longer… because I no longer feel that it challenges the societal issues that so many put on it.

Of course, people feel what they feel. Heath Ledger is a likely Oscar nominee, and I now think that Casanova can be highly instrumental in the nomination and any potential win, because it offers a counterpoint, not only to Brokeback but to all of his work since Two Hands and 10 Things I Hate About You. Michelle Williams' work here deserves an Oscar nod. She is remarkable. Anne Hathaway really suffers for the make-up and I don't think the last scene she does in close-up works because of it… she can deliver the acting, but being so close to the bad hair is very distracting. And I really enjoyed the work of Ms. Cardellini, Kate Mara, Peter McRobbie and especially Roberta Maxwell as Jack's mom. Rodrigo Prieto's work behind the camera is as spectacular as always.

I imagine there is another visit to the mountain due before this season comes to an end… or even December 1. But though I feel I have now seen the work through less reactive eyes, I still can't count myself amongst the avid fans. And so it goes…

E-ME.