General Chat / Brokeback Mountain

It's prolly the favorite for it. I haven't seen it, and I don't plan on it simply because it doesn't interest me, but with this much publicity, I wouldn't be surprised if some people start harping if it did NOT win.

So. I downloaded and watched this last night. While the move was perfectly executed, I do not believe it is a sure-fire win for the Oscar.

The best aspect of this movie is the nostalgia, longing, and desire Ang Lee constructs. The journey of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, on some levels, is an epic one. By the end of the movie I had this really odd desire to be back on the mountain, away from everything. I believe that you had a general dumbing down of everythign as time passed, multiple examples are present, I do not need to list them.

The music was breath taking. The theme for the mountain and the end was absolutly beautiful.

Overall I think it was a good movie, but not worthy of an Oscar for best picture. At times Ledger's and Gyllenhaal's performances were very fake and poorly written, I believe, on a whole the females performances were much more solid.

It will win on sheer sentimentality.

The film wasn't groundbreaking, or even marginally grand in my opinion.

Yes, it had a pretty soundtrack, and the DP (that's Director of Photography) did a great job at making Canada look like Wyoming......but that was really all.......too many far superior independent films have told this type of story before.....hell, even Shakespeare did it (albeit with opposite genders, and 500 years ago).

My money is still on Felicity Huffman to take home Best Actress for Transamerica.......which maybe should have been up for more awards, even though it was a little sloppy in its' construction.

while ignoring this movie at first like i do it with all hypocrite movies that have "this is about gay men and through watching we want you to grow up and be more mature about it" written all over them, all of a sudden i thought i had to watch this.
i had forgotten about it actually but then a friend had seen it and we talked about it so i caught interest and downloaded ...

of course, the movie couldn't but disappoint. one of the most prime media hype dilemmas i've seen.
now i don't want to bash it because it's praised so much, although i could because i really don't think it deserves any of the praise, but i just wanted to share my thoughts on it.

first off, the opening scene. my god i found myself giggling because it was so awfully badly played. i mean, any film you go see you know what it is about, roughly.
so the two guys meet each other first time and act so completely unnatural and stupid that it seemed like the lowest sitcom to me.
watching him in the side mirror, not saying hello, looking at each other like hell knows what happened to them in the past...
it was just very very unconvincing and wrong to me. so my first thought was "ouf, i really hope this movie doesn't go on on a level like this".
next thing was i didn't have subtitles, at first. hell that american accent was too much for me. the "aguirre" guy, i caught up single words and that was that. never thought it would be that hard to find proper english subs on the internet. anyhow ...

my friend's opinion about the movie: "uh, well, some really nice landscape shots, but that's about it, really ..."

and for 75% of the movie i was totally convinced that one couldn't have described it better.
the two in the mountains, doing their job, sheep...

honestly, i am a very sensitive person, you could say, but to me there was aboslutely zero electricity between the two whatsoever. and that put me off a lot. i mean that's what i had hoped for. what would have been exciting about it.
the only electricity there was was up in the clouds. really what an old-fashioned and worn-out mean of cinematography to tell what troublesome times are approaching ...

the tent scene. he grabs his hand and off they go.
damnit, where the hell did that come from? i literally went "what the fuck!?"
it happened out of freaking nowhere, and that made it so terribly unconvincing...
really bad.
did they show the whole scene in american cinemas?
like, how he spit on his hand to get things a little bit more slippery down there
i mean heh, you guys are kinda sensitive about this. how old do you have to be to see it? 31?

so what my complaint to this movie is that you couldn't feel any love or passion between them. of course when they got together it got pretty rough to show they were struggling with emotions. but it didn't convince me at all, really.
heath ledger did better at it. jake gyllenhaal is a freaking loser anyway.

i think you could feel much more affection and love between alma and ennis when she was talking to him about her wishes to move to town. michelle williams was doing the best job of them anyways, in my opinion.

the end of the movie got better. the first time i began to feel something between ennis and jack was the moment when he learned about his death and when he found his shirt in jack's room and such. that's when it started to really move me. too late.

also, can we please interpret the end a little? because to be honest, i didn't understand it.
spoilers
jack was murdered because they found out. who did? how? when? why did they not show that? the message that people want to kill homosexuality and erase it from the planet is much much much too important for a 10second long murder scene, with no background or hint of how it came to, if you ask me.
i had guesses that lureen's father was behind it. but you can't really say...
sucks.

the best scene in my opinion was the last. and that although i didn't understand what ennis was saying. what i understood was way different from the subs and again different from what he says in the german dub.
so could someone please fill me in? what did he say? what did he mean?
again, the end was really the better part of the movie. i noticed i felt sorry for ennis who saw nothing but his life in pieces, ...forever.

hollywood.
we're left with hypocrisy of them being proud of themselves because they went about this sensitive and, for a long time tabu, topic. and successfully, of course.
losers.

just like jake gyllenhaal. i even went and downloaded the oprah winfrey special
he kept on making jokes regarding the tent scene in really childish ways. there goes all of their "we wanted to go against homophobia because we're so convinced ourselves it mustn't be!".
what a pathetic and stupid show.

my conclusion, it's all a huge fuss and "praisery" that kills the movie for everyone before you've even seen it. it won't do nothing about homophobia which is, in my opinion, deeply stuck into society's heads and won't die out for another 25 years, at least.

so micool, i'm sorry but i really do not see how this movie could touch you so much.
bruckner, it's funny, but after watching i too felt like wanting to go back to the mountains, heh.
it was shot in canada, i heard? how pretty they have it, really.

Edited by posix, 15 March 2006 - 07:58 AM.

Oh come on phil.

I really enjoyed the movie. The beginning wasn't that interesting and possibly a bit odd. I didn't really pay very close attention to it and i actually didn't know that the cowboys were going to be gay in the first place. It did, somehow, convince me that they were into each other before the love seen. Anyways, doesn't matter how it does it, you really feel sorry for the both of them at the end, and i think that's what makes it a good movie.

it won't do nothing about homophobia which is, in my opinion, deeply stuck into society's heads and won't die out for another 25 years, at least.

You should really lighten up. Homophobia, imo, is not a problem. I'm quite sure i'm hugely accepting of homosexuality and so is the environment around me. On second thought, the environment here might be a few years ahead in terms of thinking freely compared to smaller german towns and the states.

(though the term 'ahead' might be controversial, especially when you see how dutch people tend to act when they're abroad.. i wouldn't know of one nationality as a-social as the dutch atm..) (besides the point, though)

Edited by Evil WME, 15 March 2006 - 02:35 PM.

....jack was murdered because they found out. who did? how? when? why did they not show that? the message that people want to kill homosexuality and erase it from the planet is much much much too important for a 10second long murder scene, with no background or hint of how it came to, if you ask me.


I don't think Jack was murdered. I think he really did have a freak truck problem accident, just as his wife had explained, but when Ennis heard the news he couldn't help imagining Jack being murdered like the older gay man that he remembered from his youth. I read the short story before seeing the movie as well, and I was left with the same impression. That's why there was no need for any more than a 10 second long murder scene. There wasn't a murder...just a fleeting thought from Ennis. I thought it was good that they didn't spend much time on it...it was sudden and unexpected for Ennis as well as the audience, so there shouldn't be a big explanation. He had an accident and died. Period.

Edited by supertrooper, 15 March 2006 - 03:20 PM.

an interesting interpretation.
but i don't think it works, seeing as the murder scene happened way before the phone call between ennis and lureen. and i don't think that there was any hint of ennis imagining it. you're actually the first who i hear say he wasn't murdered.

mark, it's true, even i shed a tear at the end, but still, i think the majority of the movie was just not right.

Then when did the murder scene occur? I thought he called from a payphone when he got the postcard marked deceased and was told what happened then. Wasn't he having flashes of his murder while she was explaining the accident to him over the phone? I may be mistaken since I haven't seen it since opening night, but I was pretty sure that they occured at the same time.

Also, I just found this in a movie revew:

"Ennis grows increasingly distant from his family, and Alma ultimately divorces him. Responsibilities of family and work also keep him away from Jack. When his postcard to Jack unexpectedly returns with “deceased” stamped on it, Ennis speaks to Jack’s wife Lureen for the first time. She tells him that Jack at age 39 died in an accident, although Ennis imagines that homophobes murdered him. Hoping to carry out Jack’s wish of having his ashes scattered on Brokeback, Ennis visits his friend’s parents. There, he learns that Jack had a relationship with another man."

...so I am not the only one who interpreted it this way.

Edited by supertrooper, 15 March 2006 - 04:27 PM.

interesting.
i would swear the murder scene was way in between and again ..."out of nowhere".

there's something else interesting in that paragraph. jack had a relation with another man? was that the husband of the one woman who talked too much?
how does ennis learn from jack's parents about this?

Edited by posix, 15 March 2006 - 06:32 PM.

In a way I kind of agree with some of what posix said. Simply put, the attraction between the charachters never makes any sense. The only tender moments are the physical ones, otherwise they are at each other's throats or just completely distant from one another. There was no sense of commraderie or friendship really even, just lust. Now granted, that isnt to say I didn't like the movie. I was just a little disappointed because I don't think it delivered the bang it could have. The setting in relationship to the story is perfect, secluded and secret. And the cinemotography serves to emphasis this with the wide shots of the landscape with the two caught in the middle, as if they are dwarfed by both their physical environment and society. The movie has alot of depth, a brilliant score, and amazing directing... but I for one left the theater kind of hating Heath Ledger. He was just a prick more or less and even I couldn't understand what he was saying half the time (so don't feel bad posix).

I for one was both shocked and extremely pleased that Crash took home best picture honors, because that movie did a better job of fully tapping into the emotions relating to its controversial topic as well as getting you far more involved in the charachters and story.

You should really lighten up. Homophobia, imo, is not a problem. I'm quite sure i'm hugely accepting of homosexuality and so is the environment around me. On second thought, the environment here might be a few years ahead in terms of thinking freely compared to smaller german towns and the states.

Homophobia not the problem? If this movie weren't about homosexuality, it would have been a horrible movie. But because they had two guys fucking in it, it's suddenly the most amazing movie ever to have graced Hollywood.

People are gay.

pyro, thanks. you've summed up pretty well what i felt.
about the score, really it's brilliant. listening to it a lot now, heh.

cory, very well said.

pyro, thanks. you've summed up pretty well what i felt.
about the score, really it's brilliant. listening to it a lot now, heh.

cory, very well said.

score or soundtrack?

hmm, well, it says ost. but there are ost and score songs on it.
what do you have?

Well, I've the OST, there was never a score released because hardly any music was actually composed for the movie. I do have more of Gustavo's work though, which is amazing.

Haha. Fags.