BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN [2005] review

The world is going to try and stop you from doing what you most want, but you cannot let it. That is what I think the message of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is. I will not refer to this movie as everyone else does with that oversimplified 2-phrase description. … A romance movie that shows courtship and falling in love like no other movie, or at least no other mainstream movie that I know of. Because when the two people who fall in love are men, they do things on “dates” that men and women just don’t do, like shooting an elk and eating it over a campfire. It shows a part of the U.S. you don’t often see on film, Wyoming. … Ang Lee’s filming of it is utterly jarring for someone living in a claustrophobic, gray mass like Tokyo. In the first act of the movie, Lee shows land, 2 men, and land. Lee let’s you take a moment in breath, especially nice if you yourself haven’t been out in the great wide open in some time.

The pacing, however, doesn’t pick up too much from the pace on Brokeback Mountain. This methodical pace feels like the pace Ennis Del Mar thinks at, slow and steady and earnest.

…If you have ever had to be apart from someone you really, really wanted to be with, this movie will resonate much more for you. If you’ve had to say repeated long good-byes, you will know what Jack Twist feels every time he parts with Ennis. For most long distance couples, there exists a tangible solution for more permanently being together. … Each character deals with this in a different way, one with outbursts of violence, the other with outbursts of sexuality.

…Watching BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN might seem like a gimmick, and I admit I didn’t go into it thinking it was just another movie. And in the end it wasn’t just another movie, it was a mirror that makes you look and see if you’re with who you want to be with right now.

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