Cinematically Thinking
   Playing it safe with Brokeback Mountain
   by T.B. Meek

The year is over and the Oscar Race is upon us. The early indicators—the victory at Golden Globes and the critics’ picks—have all but guaranteed Brokeback Mountain the little Golden Baldie for Best Picture. But is it really the best film of 2005 or a safe consensus pick? By safe, I don’t mean content, because the gay love story of two cowboys is anything but safe. It’s controversial, if not incendiary. But that’s also what makes it safe. Let me explain: a safe film for critics and Hollywood types is one that pushes the boundaries, but stays within the boundaries. If that sounds like circuitous nonsense, I’ll cite American Beauty, Midnight Cowboy and Forrest Gump. At the heart of each lies a seminal motif, which fronts a socially sensitive subtext. For Midnight Cowboy it’s the pursuit of the American Dream layered over the failure of that dream and homosexuality. At the core of American Beauty is longing for love, coming of age and self-discovery while familial dysfunction rages away underneath. And Forrest Gump is about learning to live with disability, finding that something special in you and fighting the odds while darker issues of sexual abuse and how we as a society treat the mentally challenged with poor regard, claw from the fringe.

In the case of Brokeback Mountain it’s the torment of forbidden love with two rugged A-list actors making out and humping away. It’s edgy, sentimental, well-crafted and blends an archetypal theme with a socially provocative issue. In short, it’s safe.

Brokeback Mountain has been well received, and rightfully so. The only harsh (and surprisingly few) words about the film have come from voices tied to ideologies that condemn homosexuality. Sure, it has its flaws—the formation of the bond between the two men, which the story hangs on, is anemically developed, and the aging of two boyish men over decades requires some suspension of disbelief—but the wrenching saga of being trapped and unable to love freely is heartfelt and universal.

That said, when I first saw Brokeback Mountain last November, I walked out of the theater feeling I had witnessed a gorgeous and sweeping film that would generate provocative dialogue, but I didn’t think I had just seen the movie that would be universally lauded as the best of 2005. Then, in early December, I sat stunned—not disappointed mind you—when the Boston Society of Film Critics (of which I am a member) tallied up the votes and named Brokeback Mountain the Best English Language Film, edging out Munich. No one vigorously campaigned for the film during the discussions, but it’s what we picked. Other critics’s circles followed suit and when I sat down to compile my top ten after the holidays I felt anxious, almost negligent, when Brokeback Mountain didn’t make the cut. I didn’t feel that way about the others that landed on my second ten (Murderball, Pride and Prejudice, Nobody Knows, Old Boy, Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, Happy Endings, Jarhead, Sin City, and Match Point), but I did feel the need to check myself and reaffirmed in my mind that films like Syriana and Crash (which are on my top ten) presented more relevant and timely issues. A weekend of reflection and the answer was an emphatic yes, especially Syriana with its disturbing depiction of the international labyrinth of politics and shifting allegiances in the Middle East, driven by oil and greed. It’s critical, eye opening and cautionary.

Films like Syriana hold a lot at stake and take the viewer to places they hadn’t previously been. Strangely, I felt as if I had seen large swaths of Brokeback Mountain before. It was brave, yes, but was it bold? Movies like Midnight Cowboy and Philadelphia had put A-list actors in gay roles before, and Making Love (1982), which dealt with a prominent doctor’s repressed homosexual love while trapped in a heterosexual marriage, seemed to have already blazed the path. And yet Brokeback Mountain has an undeniable air of freshness to it. Much of which can be attributed to the epic scope and feel that director Ang Lee and screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana have imbued the film with. The scrumptious rendering of the central landmark by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto is a beguiling wonderment and of course, Heath Ledger’s simmering performance is both heroic and breakthrough. It’s only too bad he’s up against Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote and David Strathairn in Good Night and Good Luck. Overall, 2005 has been a banner year for male roles/performances.

One could ponder that over the past year or so, gay marriage has become such a social political lightening rod, that Brokeback Mountain has struck a nerve and critics as well as the Hollywood rewards machine have taken up the cause with their selection. Of course many would retort that Brokeback Mountain is a universal love story where the protagonists just happen to be gay. And I’d be quick to remind them, that if Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) weren’t gay, there’d be nothing to it, Ennis and Jaclyn (I’m placing a heterosexual twist on the couple) could go live up on the bucolic mountain and fish and hunt and live in bliss without the burden of barriers imposed by society and their own conflicted sense of manhood. The movie would end before it started. The point being that their sexual orientation has everything to do with it, otherwise movies with forbidden or impossible loves, like King Kong and Memoirs of a Geisha, would meet the draw. Of course, one, while heartfelt, is purely fantasy, and the other, while a promising premise, never lives up to its potential.

Perhaps most of all what makes Brokeback Mountain the safe choice is its eternal twisting duality. It’s traditional, yet controversial, old, but new, foreign, but familiar, passionate, but not racy, macho, yet tender. It packs a lot in. And it’s a tribute too, how easy anyone with an open mind can access the emotional current. It’s a predicament few have been in, but all can recognize. Plus there’s an inordinate amount of intimacy communicated through the banality of the characters’ lives—lives that are not all that different from anyone watching the movie. Films like Syriana, Munich or A History of Violence are more straight faced, single facetted beasts that ask a lot of the viewer, both throughout and afterwards. They are not films that that creep into the heart the way Brokeback Mountain does. They may carry a greater power to provoke, but they’re not as accessible. And maybe that’s the power of Brokeback Mountain. Not everyone agrees on Syriana, Munich, Crash or A History of Violence, but everyone is comfortable with Brokeback Mountain. It may not be anyone’s number one, but it touches everyone. It’s been a solid year in film (perhaps not at the box office, but in terms of quality) and maybe that’s why no one can agree. With choice comes debate and dissent, and that’s when the safe choice rises to the top.

Tom’s Top 10 of 2005:

10. Good Night and Good Luck
9. Grizzly Man
8. Squid and the Whale
7. Capote
6. Last Days
5. A History of Violence
4. Broken Flowers
3. Munich
2. Crash
1. Syriana

-- T. B. Meek

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