I just got back from seeing this.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed it. Mostly on a personal level because of some things going on in my life right now. I loved the story and the way it played out (for the most part), but I was not a big fan of the direction. Ang Lee's rigid ideals of tastefulness began to bug me after a while.
Heath Ledger blew me away. He made me tear up quite a few times; I never knew he was such a gifted actor. Masculine, heartfelt, sexy, I thought he was riveting. I couldn't take my eyes off of him when he was onscreen. His loneliness was palpable and broke my heart. Gah, I just loved him. Loved him. Gyllenhaal suffered a bit next to him if you ask me, but not to the point where I'd diss his performance. Michelle Williams was pretty ****ing fabulous, too. I could have done without Anne Hathaway, but that was mostly because her character was so poorly written and developed. She was nothing but a cartoon character; as one-dimensional as a Little Lulu comic book panel and inspiring nothing but a snicker and a roll of the eyes from me.
The relationship between Ennis and Jack was the one of the most realistic depictions of love I've ever seen in a movie. Nothing seemed forced or phoney, it came across as actual love; deeply flawed as only humans could make it, but it being the only thing in life that matters. That feeling of longing that you have for someone you love but can't fully act on for whatever reason and the sense of not being whole without the person you're madly in love with; it was all so real. I get chills just thinking about it. So wonderful.
I only have a few real complaints about it. Ang Lee is as subtle as a jackhammer to the groin. The "visual imagery" he uses metaphorically is obvious and conventional. I got a bit bored by his subjecting me to frame after frame of lush mountainscapes with gurgling streams running in the background when the two leads are onscreen together. What is it meant to signify? Why, the natural beauty of their love, of course. Like I said, the man is as subtle as a jackhammer to the crotch and as imaginative as latter-day Stephen King.
Lee can't find it in him to be anything but pure and chaste to an extreme degree. For example, take the sexual encounters between Ennis and Jack. If Lee had taken a cue from John Waters and filmed these scenes in Odor-Rama, chances are that after I scratched the corresponding dots on my card and held them up to my nostrils, I would have smelled lilies & rose water, not the scents of dirt, sweat, & the foul stench of booze. The scenes are almost as unrealistic as heterosexual sex scenes in other mainstream pictures. In those het-sex scenes, there is a lot of light kissing, heavy petting, slow gyrating, and just a hint of shoulder to make it seem erotic. Then each character rolls over onto their respective side of the bed, sheet pulled up to their armpits, and seem to happily lie in the resulting wet spot. Realistic? Not a chance.
My gripes with Lee aside, I absolutely loved it. It made me think a lot about some things going on in my life and I'm sure my great enjoyment of it was colored by those things.
|