Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)

[Fletch F. Fletch]

an
interesting article on how the film is going to be marketed to North American audiences and a look at the tough time it had even getting made:

[Grimfarrow]

"The movie is a groundbreaker"

Zzzzz....as if gay love stories have never been made before - sheesh! So much hyperbole in that damn article. That being said, I think the film will go on to win Oscars.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Yeah, it did seem like a lot of hand-wringing over a movie that will probably only get a limited release anyway, even if it does win some Oscars.

[Grimfarrow]

I suspect grimfarrow is absolutely right and the movie will go on to get several Oscars - to show the Acacdemy's fabulous "sophistication" and tolerance in the face of the neocon Bush Right. This all helped by the fact that Lee, Gyllenhaal and Ledger are all certifiably straight.

Perhaps I shouldn't say this, and I haven't yet seen the movie, but I am I being unduly queer proprietorial in really wishing this had been a Gus van Sant project? (for filmic as well as queer personal reasons.) With other openly gay people involved in it? (Of course no major male Hollywood star is officially out, and certainly not HIM...)

I agree with you completely on your first paragraph... but Gus van Sant? NO. No, just no.

And despite my distaste for that Hollywood Reporter article, I think the film is actually quite good. It's very "classical", as in Sense and Sensibility 2: the Gay Cowpoke version. It's also Ang Lee's best film since The Ice Storm. And I have no problem with the casting, ESPECIALLY with Jake Gyllenhaal (dreammmmmyyyy...).

So my gripe is less with the film than with how Hollywood is treating it like it's some sacred taboo.

[Polybius]

A sympathetic piece in Newsweek (surprising since they've been crawling about on all fours to the Busheviks' tune the last few months...)

The film, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, is a near-perfect adaptation of Proulx's work. It has already earned the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and is almost certain to be an Oscar contender. More than that, though, "Brokeback" feels like a landmark film. No American film before has portrayed love between two men as something this pure and sacred. As such, it has the potential to change the national conversation and to challenge people's ideas about the value and validity of same-sex relationships. In the meantime, it's already upended decades of Hollywood conventional wisdom.

[Doctor Sunshine]

WHAT fucking conventional Hollywood treatment? You don't need major gaydar to pick these for instance:

Yeah, but they actually fuck in Brokeback.

[Gregory]

David, I agree completely. My guess is that most of these "journalists" have never heard of most of the films you cite nor many others that could be cited (nor how they should be interpretated, as David so well points out below!), and according to their sensibilities US films even as popular as Before Night Falls and My Own Private Idaho are not "mainstream" enough to merit inclusion in their slapdash summaries.

[Polybius]

Respectfully, David...I don't think you fully get how culturally backward a goodly chunk of the USA really is. Just because you have a checklist of subtle examples like this doesn't mean much to a large majority of filmgoers worldwide. I think that's the basis for most of this attention.

There's a wider (often dumber) world out there. I think we can all lose sight of that at times.

[Polybius]

With the stalwart Australian character actor Jack Thompson. Maybe the third or fourth Crowe film I saw.

In re the Ben Hur subtext, Gore Vidal put that in during his work on that script (needless to say, I don't see the pious Lew Wallace slipping it into the novel). Vidal's story about this and how they slipped it past the obtuse Heston but not the savvy Stephen Boyd, is hilarious.

[yoshimori]

I'd rather have straight folks make a decent film out of the story than gay folks make a piece of garbage, but it is too bad that we couldn't have put the script in a time machine and have had Fassbinder direct it with Tab Hunter and Rock Hunter starring.

Yes. Except that the script is quite bad, both structurally and re the dialogue. No drama, no poetry.

The performers seem to me to be getting acclaim because they dare to kiss - big deal. And there was apparently no intelligent direction of the actors or the camera - not a surprise for a recent Ang Lee movie. And the editing is impossibly glitchy. And the camera operator, or whoever composed the pictures, has evidently been watching a lot of 60s TV.

So yes, no doubt. Oscars for everyone!

[zedz]

In re the Ben Hur subtext, Gore Vidal put that in during his work on that script (needless to say, I don't see the pious Lew Wallace slipping it into the novel). Vidal's story about this and how they slipped it past the obtuse Heston but not the savvy Stephen Boyd, is hilarious.

We're getting well off-topic, but I prefer this topic to the latest Oscar-ready queerness-as-disability-of-the-week product. In the commentary for Fuller's House of Bamboo there's a similar story about how Robert Ryan was the only cast member to understand (instantly) that his character was gay. And boy, does he understand it: it's a terrific performance, and the subtext he adds is the motor for the entire film.

In more recent gay gangster news, it always amazed that those critics who decried the 'misogny' of Mad Dog and Glory missed the crucial point that Bill Murray's fey gang boss was madly in love with Robert De Niro's obtuse cop.

[Grimfarrow]

Straight people should stay away from making gay films.

Uhmmm...

Some of the best gay films are made by straight people. Or you think films like HAPPY TOGETHER, FUCKING AMAL or recent works like C.R.A.Z.Y. should not be made?

[Michael]

David, have you seen Bareback Mountain yet?

Edit: I meant Brokeback Mountain.

[Michael]

No I haven't seen Brokeback yet but I'm planning to see it when it comes in my town just to discover what the fuss is all about.

[Polybius]

Yes Ryan is simply great, and I believe he also understands the repressed homosexuality of his character in Crossfire. (He is one great actor and one of those rare, completely manly, straight actors like Widmark, whose whole life experience seems to encompass the gamut of human behavior, with aboslutely no fear of playing fags or anyone else.

I will happily pile onto this bandwagon, especially after watching The Naked Spur again a few days ago. Robert Ryan is criminally underrated. A skilled and subtle actor.

Grimffarrow's dislike of Gus notwithstanding, the head count of gay filmmakers in the US is distressingly low. Gus, Araki, Todd Haynes. I suppose you could add a handful of straight directors like Curtis Hanson, Cronenberg, MInghella and a few others who are "plugged in".

Out of nothing more than idle curiosity (and I'm hoping that this isn't the question that gets us to critical mass for derailing the thread, but this all seems germane to the original thread question, especially with a wide ranging cast of aesthetes like we have around here), what is your opinion of John Schlesinger, and where would you place him on this list? He's not exactly a Golden Ager and he's obviously not an active director.

Instead we get straight directed, gay inflected (at best) twaddle like the appalling Moulin Rouge (with nods to "gay taste" in things like the Kylie Minogue "fairy" )

I feel so damned validated right now I may just explode =D>

[Grimfarrow]

Three words for you: Todd Haynes's Safe.

The best gay films by gay directors actually say something about homosexuality and being gay, the best gay films by straight directors just tend to be good romances with two men or two women.

I totally disagree. The best gay films actually take the "gay" angle and transcends the material into something philosophical and transcendental. See: TROPICAL MALADY.

And one of my favorite gay films is directed by a straight man - the hot-as-hell PLATA QUEMADA (BURNT MONEY). Though the magic of the film is dispelled somewhat since I met Eduardo Noriega in person.

On another gay cinema note, a recent film that I programmed for the Hong Kong Les & Gay Film Fest that has been criminally neglected is LOGGERHEADS, which I found really quite touching and well-directed. Anyone else seen this?

[Grimfarrow]

I quite liked WIlD SIDE - we programmed it for HKLGFF last year. It's a serious step-up from COME UNDONE, IMO (plus, with Agnes Godard as DoP, how can one miss it?). Dennis Lim from Village Voice has a good review of it.

[zedz]

Last rant: Ryan and Joan Bennet together are completely supernatural in Renoir's sublime Woman on the Beach!

Let's spin this thread off into a "Gay Hollywood" thread and a "Godlike Genius of Robert Ryan" thread and rant on.

Polybius is right about The Naked Spur - everyone is terrific in that film, but Ryan rules the roost.

[yoshimori]

The best gay films actually take the "gay" angle and transcends the material into something philosophical and transcendental. See: TROPICAL MALADY.

Yes. Tropical Malady is mesmerizing. One of the two or three best gay-oriented movies I've seen.

One of the others is a similarly entrancing film, made 40 years earlier, is Georges Franju and Jean Cocteau's Thomas, the Imposter. It's a beautifully made dream of love and war, concerning a boy who pretends to be someone else so he can get close to the guys on frontlines. Both Franju's and Cocteau's best work, imo.

I'd kill for a DVD of the pristine print I saw at the American Cinematheque's Franju retro 6 or 7 years ago. Mr Farrow should program THAT in Hong Kong or Toronto... and invite me to come watch!

[Grimfarrow]

I'd kill for a DVD of the pristine print I saw at the American Cinematheque's Franju retro 6 or 7 years ago. Mr Farrow should program THAT in Hong Kong or Toronto... and invite me to come watch!

Haha - thanks for the recommendation! I haven't seen the film before, and that certainly intrigues me. Not sure how "programmable" it is in the context of our festival (more suitable for the HKIFF, in fact), but I'll keep my eyes peeled.

If you're wondering what kind of fest I put on, here's the link: http://www.hklgff.com - it's going on right now, in fact.

Davidhare - I hated BREAKFAST ON PLUTO - walked out of it, in fact. Cillian Murphy's "Kitty" is singularly the most irritating character on-screen this year. Dim-witted, charmless and utterly crap at drag.

[GringoTex]

I'm interested in seeing this because my hometown boy (yes, I'm from "Anarene," Texas) wrote the screenplay. I don't have a clue what McMurtry knows about gay dynamics or why he chose to write this screenplay, but you can bet the cowboy culture will be dealt with accurately.

[che-etienne]

Frankly, I think saying that gay director is more fitted to making a movie about gays is like how Spike Lee is always trying to drive people off projects for making movies about famous African-Americans. It was absurd that he drove Jewison off of "Malcolm X", who frankly would've I think made a better film than Lee. It was just as absurd to try to drive him off of "The Hurricane", and then to try to drive Michael Mann, an even more superior artist than either of those two off of "Ali". The same goes for saying that a gay person is more qualified to make a movie that is concerned with gay characters or gay subject matter. I agree that it gives a unique and interesting perspective, but it's frankly a very limited view to pigeonhole directors either way. I think if a filmmaker is honest about his subject matter than it shouldn't matter, and hopefully Ang Lee has been with "Brokeback Mountain". I look forward to seeing it.

[Polybius]

Well...I'm on record here as loving Ali nearly as much as Henrik, I think Malcom X is exquisite and I have a few problems with The Hurricane that I doubt would have come up if Spike had directed it (making the Hedaya character into something of a Javert was an aesthetic mistake and probably helped rob Washington of his richly deserved Best Actor Oscar that year.)

But, in the main, I tend to agree. Any great artist can tackle almost any subject with great results, if things align properly. Essentially the same set of provisos that mark any cinematic undertaking. (i.e, can Martin Scorsese be dissuaded from casting a lacktalent hoochie because he thinks she's hot? It's a persistent problem of his that has nothing to do with any broader issue, it's just a character flaw he sometimes has.)

[Polybius]

His last foray into the west being the tremendously insulting Ride With The Devil gives me a little pause.

[kieslowski_67]

I have and love Lifshitz' earlier Presque Rien (US title Come Apart on a passable non anamorphic Wellspring disc) which is quite naturalistic but has the complexity and emotional density of, say, the best Techine and is VERY far removed from sentimental teenage boy meets boy love stories. I should add to this growing list of the neglected Remy Lange's extremely attractive French Arab gay film The Road to Love shot on video (another dog of a disc with the color values going to pink and green after the first OK ten minutes.)

"Presque Rien" (come undone) definitely has its moments. My main problems with the movie is that it only provides segments of the life of the two leads, and some major issues (like why their relationship fell apart) were not clearly addressed by the director.