Brokeback Mountain (A tribute to gay men)
Ghostly readers who have been following my blog will know that I have an unusually large proportion of close gay mates to straight friends. After all the media hoo-ha about how wonderful Brokeback Mountain is, what a ground-breaking movie and how it reflects gay love in the most accurate light, blah, blah - well, I have got to watch it don’t I?
Strangely, despite being surrounded by smoochy icky lovey dovey gay couples, and having tried to imagine them having sex (I do have a fertile imagination, and it is quite fascinating after hearing but not seeing it) - I must confess that I felt trepidation prior to watching the movie because I was not too sure how I would react to it. Hearing and imagining two men doing “it” is one thing - but watching it happening on the big screen?! A bit cringing. Am I as liberal as I thought? Am I being disloyal to my gay friends for feeling disgusted at gay sex?!
I dragged Mr Boo to watch the movie of course, who appeared less edgy than I did (perhaps..?). So there we have it, two extremely cute men, Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake G (can’t spell his name) as Jack Twist - seemingly heterosexual with none of the limp wristed gestures associated with the pink community, humping together in the scenic mountains. The first sex scene was rather graphic, but thankfully not ponographic - I was uncomfortable but not as cringey as I thought I would have felt. Unfortunately, I could not say so for the rest of the audience - you could hear nervous male laughter (probably from the straight Asian men - Mr Boo was respectfully quiet) and titters everytime the cowboys do a cow poke or kiss passionately. Asian audience are still not as exposed to homosexuality as the West I guess, and therefore do not know how to react to this seemingly “natural” (depending on the perspective) love story.
Having gotten past the “two men having sex” hurdle, I was concentrating on the story and acting to see if it merited all the accolades that it has won since it came out. It was a bit slow-moving for me, but then again I was watching at the end of a long day at work so tiredness was a factor in marring my enjoyment of the movie. Both the male leads were excellent though - Heath Ledger in particular as the taciturn Ennis, and you could feel his physical pain of bottling up his true emotions. Credit to both men for making the love story as “natural” as it could be. The supporting female leads also gave as good as they got, despite the minimal screen-time they have.
It was a good story about pain and loss and regret, but nothing that we haven’t seen before in straight love setting. And probably because I am not gay, I felt emotionally detached from the movie. There were apparently reviewers who came out crying, but I was still dry-eyed in the end, which was quite amazing in view that I shed an abundance of tears over even crap Korean dramas.
Rating: 3.5 boos out of 5
