Brokeback Mountain

[bonanzataz]

i completely agree with you about the aging process. especially anne hathaway. they didn't even try to cover her up or anything.

anyway, i really enjoyed it, mostly. the first hour and 15 minutes was just perfect filmmaking. then it kind of meanders and has no idea where it wants to go. so the end was kind of a let down, b/c yes, it is incredibly melodramatic. heath ledger and michele williams give the best performances in the entire film. there's not one false note coming out of them. gyllenhall and hathaway are also very good, but nowhere near as good as ledger and williams, who both deserve many, many awards. plus, the gyllenhall stuff isn't as well written. and the ending just felt like a cop-out b/c they had no idea how to end it effectively. but whatever.

of course it has great cinematography. beautiful wide shots of wyoming and lots of really intimate close-ups.

sorry, this review is pretty dry b/c i saw this a few days ago. it lingers with the viewer for a few days afterwards, it just should've had a stronger, less tearjerky ending. i just wish they could have written a better draft of the script and worked some of the kinks out or made a stronger cut of the film, b/c ang lee's direction and prieta's cinematography are both just so good. definitely one of the better if not best movies i've seen this year (and yes, the other great memorable movie i saw this year was history of violence).

[MacGuffin]

Few filmmakers can make a movie about two cowboys falling in love in 1963, like Brokeback Mountain, and have it be considered Academy Award material. But certainly Ang Lee is in a class by himself. He first gained notice in America with his “Father Knows Best” trilogy of The Wedding Banquet, Pushing Hands and Eat Drink Man Woman. Later he gained monstrous international acclaim with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won four. After that he ventured into big budget studio films with The Hulk.

After that film didn’t do as well as anticipated Lee went back to lower budgeted filmmaking with Brokeback Mountain. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as two ranchhands who have a passionate love affair over 20 years to the detriment of their families.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Had you wanted to do something in the Western genre or was it just this script?

Ang Lee: The script hit me. But when that happens, usually I don’t know why. It could be something I was not familiar with, but it hit core emotions for me. Ride with the Devil was a pre Western and this is kind of a post Western. But both happen in the part of America that most people, certainly a foreigner like myself, don’t know. It’s the other side of America that really was influential to the world and that strikes me as something interesting.

DRE: Did you relate to one character more than the other?

Lee: Heath’s character. He’s the anchor for the movie. Also he carries the theme I always carry in my movie, repression, self-denial, fish out of water. He’s playing it more as inner conflict. Also I relate to him more because he carried that Western theme. He’s more of a macho man prone to more confusion. Jake carried more of the romantic love story part of the movie. Jake is one of the real classic American leading men. He carried that part of the ingredients for me in the movie. But I don’t feel that way. I’m more repressed than outgoing.

DRE: Are they gay or are they just guys that happen to fall in love?

Lee: To me, they’re gay. I think Jack Twist is more obvious about it. In the original short story, it’s very hard to tell if they are gay. But as actors who play them and filmmakers who make them, I think we need to know. They’re attracted to each other even though a particular character denies it. Ennis is more innocent in that way but when it hits, it’s very strong. Intuitively you don’t need a sex manual and he knows what to do so it was very dominant.

DRE: You think it’s the first time for both of them?

Lee: I don’t know if Jack is experienced, but he’s more knowing from the beginning.

DRE: [co-screenwriter] Larry McMurtry has said that your main focus was on the casting, what was the process for this?

Lee: Usually, if not all the time, I always seek good actors. I always want to work with actors that do dramatic type of movies, whether they’re a small movie or a big action. For cinema they have to carry certain things such as how Heath carried that Western thing. I want to make sure the audience can learn about who they are just from seeing them.

DRE: This is your second movie that you chose your main character to be a closeted gay man [after The Wedding Banquet]. What is it about that subject matter you find so interesting?

Lee: I don’t know. But for this one it’s mainly the short story that moved me so much. I wrote The Wedding Banquet myself. I used extreme examples to examine that change in my society. It was a tool for me to get into family drama. This is such a romantic love story, which I’ve never seen. I just fell in love with it and I felt I had to do it. I don’t choose to do a gay related subject matter because they are gay. I would do it again and again if they’re good.

DRE: Recently Jackie Chan that he said that an influence of American films is hurting Asian cinema. Having worked on both sides what do you think of that?

Lee: That’s a big question. That’s a phenomenon throughout the world. You really have to struggle to make your movies. There are always cheaper movies to be made. Independent movies, festival type of movies, art films. But the main industry is being hurt a lot. It’s easier for people to watch Hollywood movies. In the past, people who think they have class see American. If you were lower class, they didn’t want to read subtitles.

Now Korea is picking up. But it’s very hard for Chinese film to survive. Is Hollywood to be blamed? I don’t know. They have themselves to be blamed. It’s very hard to compete with Hollywood.

DRE: Is there something that Hong Kong can do to reclaim where it was?

Lee: They have to get into the Chinese market. That’s three times bigger than English speaking population. It’s hard because it’s been communist for a long time. They block out the commercialism for a very long time. They don’t have that genre. Now Hollywood is ready.

DRE: The range of material you’ve worked with is very broad, how do you choose what you do?

Lee: Different material hits me. I think I’m fortunate enough to have enough success to jump to different things. After the first three or four movies, I think I do have a need to break away from being stereotyped into a certain genre. Making movies is the best film school for me. I never get tired of it.

DRE: You’ve said you rediscovered your love of filmmaking making Brokeback Mountain especially after The Hulk. Why is that?

Lee: I know a lot about filmmaking and it’s hard to pretend that I was virginal with this new movie. But that’s what I did because I was just exhausted after doing The Hulk. I got sick and tired of just about everything. Not so much filmmaking, but what comes along with filmmaking. To support the filmmaking part, there’s a lot of social obligation and everything you have to deal with. That’s the part that drowned me. I deliberately wanted to make a smaller film. Movie by movie I can peel through layers and layers. That’s tiresome and quite abusive.

[w/o horse]

I really connectedwith this movie.  An 'I forget where I am' kind of connection.  I thought it was beautiful and passionate and tragic.

when i really thought about it, the film itself really isnt that great. it's basically an average melodrama at best if you take away the fact that it's about two men which is the only thing that really makes it interesting.  much of the film probably would've been pretty ridiculous had it been played between 'straight' characters because of how melodramatic it gets at times

Really?  Such an opposite reaction I had to the film.  I thought to myself 'I've seen the straight version of this, it was called Age of Innocence, it was great, but it wasn't this great.'  Stories about people who can't have what they want for reasons they can't control, societal reasons in particular, really just fucking hit me right in the heart.  I felt, through excellent filmmaking, every bit of of these characters and their pain.  It wasn't an empathetic reaction either, I have no idea what that would be like you know, it was just pure emotion solicited entirely from the performances, the writing, and the directing.

The characteres and situations weren't black and white either, which makes me disagree with the idea of this film being melodramatic.  Again, I would use the word passionate.  The reactionary scenes, the family scenes, the trips to Mexico, the upside down wife, the projecting, the clouds and the fields and the girl dancing for your attention.

I really liked the movie.  A lot.

[planet_jake]

I liked it alot.

I was walking in expecting a tragic love story with the male role in place of the female role and instead got something much more complicated. I think I would have ADORED the film had it not been for Ang Lee's bullshit post card nature photography in the beginning... I can't stand that crap. But other than that, story and character-wise this film was entirely engaging, very tragic and memorable... Not in my top ten of the year but certainly a good movie.

[clerkguy23]

dick up tom sizemore's butt mountain

[Pubrick]

dick up tom sizemore's butt mountain

what the fuck was that? a retarded response to the joke that died 6 weeks ago?

go back to lurking.

[Pozer]

just go back period.

[pete]

go back mountain.

[clerkguy23]

man, the comment obviously wasn't a serious attempt at making a witty joke about brokeback mountain. it involved tom sizemore and was basically a dick and fart joke. this board is filled with retards.

yey. go back to being elitist movie pricks.

[hedwig]

man, the comment obviously wasn't a serious attempt at making a witty joke about brokeback mountain. it involved tom sizemore and was basically a dick and fart joke.

well THANKS FOR DROPPIN' SOME KNOWLEDGE, clerkyguy23!

this board is filled with retards.

yey. go back to being elitist movie pricks.

yey. i hope that was a goodbye.

[matt35mm]

man, the comment obviously wasn't a serious attempt at making a witty joke about brokeback mountain. it involved tom sizemore and was basically a dick and fart joke. this board is filled with retards.

yey. go back to being elitist movie pricks.

 

[Pozer]

Igonre them, and they eventually just go away, remember?

[pete]

I'd like to wash my hands of this most recent case of kneejerk reaction against the newbie.  I have done some hating before but this instance I was just throwing out a punchline, with no malicious intention.  I did exactly what the newb did and what most kids here do: you see a bunch of other kids making jokes and you wanna join in.  I didn't think his punchline was that sinful that he deserved to be jumped.  obviously he overreacted too, but don't you think it was kinda petty to tell this kid to "go back to lurking" because he was a new kid making a bad joke?  I mean, Neon's over there spouting Republican hate for god's sake, I think we can tolerate one bad late joke from a newbie.

[Pubrick]

fair enuff pete. and i think this board is generally good about newbs, not everyone gets jumped on. i think the lesson learned here (if any) is that if you're a new member you prolly should do more than stupid jokes that are not only late but completely irrelevant (tom sizewho?). otherwise they're asking for a harsh reply until they smarten up and fly right. i stand by my comment, we need more I Love A Magicians and less clerkguy23s.

[polkablues]

I mean, Neon's over there spouting Republican hate for god's sake

But when he does it, it's cute.

Besides, the newb bashing is all part of the process.  We're like the army; if they make it through boot camp, they're fully prepared to fight in the trenches.