Brokeback Mountain Review and Response

[Serrart]

Originally Posted by dissention

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

or...
the role of nature as deus ex machina
Ennis and Jack as an oasis in an unforgiving reality
a love story protected from the shield of nature against rules and conventions

He uses nature as a living character, his nature isn't reassuring, but keeps changing, is fascinating, tormented, seeks revenge, gives another chance, seals emotions. It's where revelations, absolute feelings, death take place. And it's been this way in movies like Pushing Hands, Eat Drink Man Woman (where nature is in the most carnal shape, food) , Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Ride With The Devil, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain.

Originally Posted by dissention

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.

So two cowboys in love have to stink? That's Hollywood, not Oriental way to see love. Lee shows passion as most directors of his culture do. His sublimation is apparent, it's an easy path to an uncompromising and universal sphere, that usually western cinema portrays through cliches. He goes to the core of feelings, as it usually happens making love with someone you (saying it in general) care for, no?

Romy