Brokeback Mountain

So I finally watched it. This has been one episode that I have been planning with Machiavellian precision ever since before I'd left home. I wanted to see it but I didn't think there was any way I could sneak an R-rated "gay cowboy" movie past my parents, who are cool on some things but a bit more tetchy on others. So, I decided to wait until I was at school, which, obviously, is where I am now. I bought the DVD for less than $10 off Amazon, got it today, and stuck it into my handy-dandy laptop, which plays movies in addition to being, well, a computer.

I was blown away. I came into the film with high expectations - everyone and his brother talking it up and it sweeping practically every awards show that it encountered. But... well... wow. I finished it about 15 minutes ago and I think the real weight of it is just hitting me now.

Confession. Guys think that girl-on-girl is pretty fuckin' hot; well, it's the reverse for me. I happily admit that I find guy-on-guy incredibly sexy. But that is entirely not what BBM is about. There's only one sex scene between the protagonists, and then tastefully shot with no nudity at all, mostly in the dark. BBM, as just about anybody with an Internet connection to IMDB knows, is not about that. It's about love - real love, the kind that we only get (or give) once in our lives, and how there was tremendous pressure on the cowboy main characters to "conform," to live normally, to marry and have kids, when what they really wanted (but could never admit to) was a life with each other.

[SPOILERS]










At the end of the film, when Ennis calls Lureen to find out what happened, and then later goes through Jack's closet and finds the bloodstained shirt that he kept all those years, my heart was just breaking. Heath Ledger did a marvelous job at portraying the emotions of a character who thought that he wasn't allowed to feel them, and my entire thoughts through this five-minute-plus scene consisted of, Oh, Ennis. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That and sobbing my eyes out. It was a good thing that I was alone in my dorm, or I'm pretty sure that anxious questions would have been levied. Fortunately, one roomie's off with her boyfriend, and the other went to a volleyball game.

So, yeah. Nothing else to say in this post but, holy crow. I'm watching it with my sister when she comes to visit me in November, and I think she's going to like it almost as much as I did.