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A Special Review of the Movie Called 'Brokeback Mountain'
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Mumbling gay cowboys
leave critic a bit angry
of TheColumnists.com
I just came back
from a visit to Marbles Mountain.
It is a movie called “Brokeback Mountain” and it is
getting more hype and more political correctness in print than
anything since the word “damn” was uttered by Clark
Gable in a shocking “Gone With The Wind” scene.
Marbles Mountain is the story of two loser, lowlife ne’er-do-wells
spending a summer pushing sheep up a mountain and each other
down inside a tent.
Their emotional speeches are made inside their oversized eleven
gallon hats or whispered darkly to each other like an Army hearing
test in case you can fake a reason for rejection.
For 134 minutes these two louts mumble about their strained lives,
unable by the times (as far back in the dark ages as 1963) and
the tensions to realize their life ambitions, each other.
“I’m not queer,” mumbles Heath Ledger, the alleged
Academy Award candidate for expressing so much pain without too
many words being understood by the audience.
I think Jake Gyllenhaal repeats the same speech in the same scene
but somebody cracked open a box of popcorn behind me as he moved
his lips so I’m not sure I heard it.
Gyllenhaal, who is Jack to Ennis in the film, shows up years
after their initial mountain meeting with a mustache. That is
supposed to advertise the passage of time. What it advertises
is a clown costume. The only thing missing from the scene are
the 30 clowns falling out of the tiny Volkswagen as they do annually
in the touring circus.
All the media talk is about the pain of this unrequited love,
the modern all male version of "Romeo and Juliet" or
Bogart and Bergman, Bonnie and Clyde or Taylor and National Velvet.
Want an unrequited love team story? Try anything with Laurel
and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello or Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid. Want the real stuff this movie supposedly
portrays? Try Randolph Scott and anybody or watch Rock Hudson
die a tortuous death.
I wasn’t bothered because these two guys lip-locked behind
the one guy’s house. Hell, we can’t even define families
any more. I was bothered because they never could escape their
lost souls long enough to utter a clear, understood meaningful
line.
I could never care a whit about either character in this movie
and when Ennis practically abuses his wife and Jack clearly ignores
his, I could only wonder why anybody would care about them.
The promotion of the movie forced me to give up a Sunday football
game because I wanted to be moved and entertained.
Instead I was bored and emotionally abused by Marbles Mountain.
The last painful movie touching on this subject of gay rights
was “Philadelphia,” the brilliant, touching, honest
attempt at dealing with gay rights in the era of AIDS. Hanks
is a loving character with a caring partner in Antonio Banderas.
Denzel Washington is the attorney who reluctantly takes on the
Hanks case of civil rights and wrongful termination of his job
despite his homophobic self.
Ironic, that ultra liberal Hollywood would cast three famous
actors with gorgeous wives in this gay-driven film. That’s
another story.
In nearly 50 years around professional athletes, only a handful
has ever come out publicly as gay. There have been dozens of
names bandied about in press boxes. No famous star athlete at
the top of his game ever risked public embarrassment or professional
scorn by advertising his alternate lifestyle.
Why should he? Who cares? Can he play? That’s what matters
and that is what should matter.
If Ledger wins an Academy Award for this role it will be turned
into the gay Marlon Brando mumbles award.
How movie critics can go so ecstatic over a film that can not
be understood even on the biggest screen in town with the best
sound system is beyond me.
There is an apocryphal journalistic story about the guy covering
the opening of a brilliant new play. He races off before the
end of the drama to beat his newspaper deadline. He lauds the
play as a classic.
While he brags about his review, the other newspapers tell the
story of the theater burning down. I think a lot of the reviewers
of Marbles Mountain wrote reviews without hearing it.
Oh yeah. Wife Janet and I had to make our decision between "King
Kong" and Marbles Mountain. What a mistake. I think Kong
talked more clearly.
©2006 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The cartoons are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection,
1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This
column first posted on Jan. 2, 2006.
You
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