Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Albert Lanier with yet more of his coverage of the Hawaiian International Film Festival. This time he has a look at Ang Lee's male on male cowboy love story called BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. This is supposed to be a really solid flick and Lanier sings its praises below. Here's his review!
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN: ONE OF THE YEAR'S FINEST FILMS
by Albert Lanier
There's a scene in Ang Lee's latest film BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN which was screened on Monday October 24 as a gala screening during the Hawaii International Film Festival that has been replayed in my mind over and over again and helps explain why this film works so well.
It's a simple scene: Cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in Mexico- most likely in a border town-and he ambles up to fairly wide alleyway where on one side there is a row of men.
One of the men catches Jack's eye and says "Senor?" Jack says nothing but nonetheless gives a sort of nonverbal consent and the two men walk down the alley.
There are two people talking on the other side of the alleyway. There is a single lamp or light shining over these two people with only a void-like darkness ahead.
Jake and his new friend pass this illuminated area and walk onward into the night, swallowed up as it were by the darkness.
Visually, this is a superb scene. It tells us all we need to know without excess dialogue or too many editing cuts. It is almost pure cinema because it is pictorially told: we see what is occurring in the scenes and comprehend its meaning through the images.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a film largely told through its images. Some of its scenes have the visual depth and breadth of westerns by John Ford and Raoul Walsh (though Ford and Walsh would never have touched this film's subject matter) and even the smaller, more intimate scenes set in apartments and houses loom large not so much in actual square footage or space but in narrative flow.
BROKEBACK begins in the summer of 1963 when ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) arrives in Signal, Wyoming. He waits outside the trailer office of rancher Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid). A black truck pulls up and Jack Twist gets out and kicks his truck-perhaps upset at the performance of the vehicle. Jack looks over at Ennis.
Aguirre (a name which reminds me of the stunning film AGUIRRE WRATH OF GOD starring Klaus Kinski as a European explorer who leaves a trail of dead bodies in his search for treasure and glory) finally drives up in a light brown car and heads into his office. He then opens the door and tells both men to get their "scrawny asses" into his office if they want work.
The job? Essentially, they will be watching over large herds of sheep up on Brokeback Mountain. One of the men will be a herder while the other oversee their tiny camp and handle the cooking duties.
Aguirre wants them to essentially sleep near the sheep at all times and essentially watch out for state forestry workers.Aguirre isn't a letter of the law kind of man and like many businessmen will get away with murder if he can dismantle the gun fast enough.
So Jack and Ennis come out of the office, meet and shake hands and head off to a local bar where they talk.
Well, Jack does most of the talking. He hails from Texas and is largely a rodeo rider much like his father except his father didn't teach him squat about trick riding and riding bulls.
Ennis parents died when he was young-there was "curve in the road and they missed it"-leading to the foreclosure of the family's ranch and Ennis being raised by his brother and sister.
Ennis and Jack eventually make their way to Brokeback mountain riding their horses and overseeing masses of sheep making their way through trails and valleys (some of these sheepherding scenes make this film seem like RED RIVER with wool).
The two men take care of the sheep, eat mostly beans for dinner (Better Most according to the label-very funny) and instead of just sleeping with the sheep, end up sleeping with each other.
The overused phrase "rugged outdoors" could be used to described the expansive tableaus they inhabit but there is great beauty here as well: tall mountain peaks rising majestically and impressively throughout the landscape and lush green trees dotting the terrain and standing at attention like soldiers in formation.
The topography and geography of these scenes is important for they make an important contribution to the dilemma Jack and Ennis face: there are forces larger and mightier than two ol' cowboys.
Ennis explains the social aspect of these forces when he tells Jack about two cowboys who lived with each other on a ranch.
The arrangement may have been kosher with them but it certainly sparked disapproval in the nearby community. So much as that one of the cowboys was taken out and beaten to death, his genitals manhandled and broken off with a tire iron.
It is during this story we see one of the film's few flashbacks as a a man lies dead, the lap of his blue jeans bloodied.
Ennis remembers this story-his father actually took him to see the dead man-and for him it is a object lesson: his attraction must covert not overt.
In fact, the whole language of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN lies in circuitous words, phrases that shade reality not bring it into the light. The script co-written by one of the finest literary chroniclers of the west Larry McMurtry features dialogue that creates an artful and poetic though simple and roughhewn code as spoken by the actors through their characters.
For example, the attraction between Ennis and Jack is referred to as "this thing" or "that thing".
Rather vague words. However, when Ennis talks about how acting on "this thing" can get a man killed, we understand clearly what he is talking about.
Ennis and Jack end up coming down the mountain earlier in the summer than expected.
They both go their separate ways: Ennis marries his sweetheart Alma (Michelle Williams) and starts raising a family in the small town of Riverton, Wyoming while Jack meets lady rodeo rider Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway) while riding bulls in Texas and two fall in lust if not in love with each other. Jack gets hitched to Lureen and the two have a son.
Ennis winds toiling on a highway crew, pacing dirt roads by spreading tar while Jack works as a salesman for Lurleen's father's successful tractor and farm equipment dealership.
4 years pass and Ennis gets a postcard from Jack who writes he will be passing through Riverton. Interested in getting together? "You bet" writes Ennis back.
Thus starts a series of get togethers over the years as Jack and Ennis meet every year thereafter to set up camp at Brokeback and enjoy the scenic wonders of the mountains and the river...and each other's company.
I've written enough about the plot and story of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, the rest you will have to discover for yourself (or read a review with lots of spoilers).
I will add this which filmgoers and patrons of the site might consider a SPOILER ALERT: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a tragedy, a sad drama of unfulfilled yearnings.
BROKEBACK was described in HIFF's formal program as an "epic American love story."
I don't agree with this description. Love stories involve sugary dialogue, honeyed words, cute and charming situations. The characters often morph into balladeers of sorts, crass poets of love declaring their declarations for their intended.
Not here. There is nothing soft or weak about BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Love stories largely appeal to women but BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a masculine film despite the sexual orientation of its characters.
Consider the fact that characters fish, herd sheep, camp out in the great outdoors, get into fights and scraps with others.
In essence, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a man's film told through a male perspective. This means the main protagonists often hold back emotions instead of letting them burst forth like raging flood waters. They speak plainly and simply instead of in highly verbose syntax.
It also means that love is expressed not necessarily through words but by gestures and embraces.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is the work of a top notch director at the height of his powers. Ang Lee has crafted a powerful drama that transcends the narrow categories this film could have been placed in.
Lee works successfully with his DP Rodrigo Prieto (who deserves an Oscar nomination for his outstanding work here) to tell this tale visually, setting up not just pretty pictures of cowboys on horseback in front of beauteous buttes and mountains
but shots that communicate the essence of the story as well if not better than dialogue.
Not that the script is bad. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana seem to do a fine job adapting Anne Proulx's short story not just bring to the screen line that resonate but characters who do too.
The performances are also excellent. Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger breathe life into Jack and Ennis imbuing the characters with both a vitality and melancholy that are compelling. Ledger is especially good here because he brings a vulnerability and sensitivity that manages to peek out at times behind his flinty facade.
Randy Quaid does good, veteran acting work as the shifty Aguirre and Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway contribute fine performances in what could easily have been throwaway roles (especially Hathaway who plays Lureen with a certain suspicious subtlety).
Ang Lee demonstrates with BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN that he is one of the fascinating and distinctive filmmakers working not just in Hollywood but internationally as well.
I have a gut feeling that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN will be misunderstood when its is released, that its subtle visual and verbal language will be misinterpreted, that some critics and moviegoers might up frustrated at overt lack of romantic pyrotechnics.
That would be a shame because in a year of lackluster Hollywood box office and film with CGI gorillas that go thud in the night, it would be shame for this film to go unnoticed or ignored.
For BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a film of such restrained and yet heartfelt emotion and power.
It is when all is said and done-a true tale of the West filled with unrealized dreams and the heartbreak of what could have been, might have been if only things were different.
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