I heartily recommend to you Stephen Hunter’s analysis in the Washington Post of Brokeback Mountain.
It’s hard to argue that the movie constitutes any kind of threat, or pro-gay propaganda. For one thing, there’s too much authentic pain in it, it’s too bloody sad. The final image of the aloneness of the survivor is heartbreaking. He was never a crier, of course, but you know inside he’s sobbing. The film shows, convincingly, that love comes from the heart, not the glands, and if the heart is engaged, the body follows.
Hunter nicely parses the images in Brokeback. For example, he points out how Ang Lee uses images of rivers to represent homosexuality. Rivers are shown as “a great torrent of nature, which cannot be controlled and which provides sustenance, nurture, satisfaction, joy.”
Where I must disagree with Hunter a little is when he says that the movie seems anti-family:
…generally, the movie is cruel to family. It seems to think family is a bourgeois delusion; Ennis’s poor daughter ends up in a gaudy Trans Am owned by her fiance, a harbinger of roughneck disaster to come. Jack’s boy is simply forgotten about; his ultimate pain — and it will be considerable — is not commented upon.
The movie also misses the deepest joy of family, which is that sense of connection to the great wheel of life. Giving birth to, educating and loving a kid are among the profound joys of human existence. “Brokeback Mountain” cannot begin to imagine such a thing; that reality simply is not on its radar, and if you looked at the story from another vantage — the children’s — it would be a different tale altogether: about greedy, selfish, undisciplined homosexuals who took out a contract in the heterosexual world, and abandoned it. They weren’t true men; they failed at the man’s one sacred duty on Earth, which is to provide.
I think Hunter’s partly right. This is a story about selfish people. I danced around this point when I wrote about it originally, but this sort of story — about two people who love each other despite opposition or their responsibilities — winds up being about selfish people, whether they’re heterosexual or homosexual. The phrase we’re staying together for the kids is the summation of this notion that your children matter more than your happiness.
Look at Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). Joanna Kramer is a very unhappy woman who puts her own life before her duty to her child. The movie kind of makes her out to be a bitch. There is simply no way for two married people, each with their own children, to divorce their respective spouses and build a new life without it being messy. Unless we’re discussing families of robots.
Am I suggesting people with kids shouldn’t divorce? Of course not. I’m not talking about making a decision to split because your relationship with your spouse is shattered; I’m talking about choosing to leave because you’ve fallen in love with somebody else — a huge all-encompassing love that swallows you whole. That’s a tough situation. And you’re not going to look too good to the outside world.
Jack Twist is selfish. He’s very much into gratification. I don’t think he takes his paternal responsibilities very seriously; he seems to treat his marriage as a matter of convenience. Ennis, on the other hand, does shirk his duty to his girls. But at the end of the movie, after Jack has died, he seems to come back to the land of the living. He seems to be onto a path of acting as a real father to Junior for the first time.
Hunter does touch on something here. In American culture, part of being a man is to play the role of the provider. You go out and shoot things or work in the fields all day. And as we have moved into a more civilized society, and as women have played a larger role as wage-earners, men haven’t had new roles given to them. What are they supposed to do instead? If not provide, then what?
But part of what Hunter is really saying is that being a provider is providing something of yourself. You give your children love and guidance. You give them attention and the benefit of your wisdom. Jack and Ennis only do this with each other. And they can’t even do it openly. If gay men are unable to be married and adopt and raise children with a partner, then they do miss out on an important piece of what being a man is all about.
But it’s not as though they didn’t choose that goal. It is simply denied to them.
As I said before, this isn’t a political movie. But it is inescapably a political subject.
UPDATE: If you haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain yet, perhaps it’s because you’re thinking, “Why would I want to see some gay movie?” I’m not being coy when I tell you that it’s not about a gay love affair. It’s about Ennis Del Mar, a man who finds the love of his love — the person with whom he wants to share everything, including sex — and it turns out to be another man. If the movie wanted to tell a story of two gay men, that would be one thing. But Ennis is in a different position. He is like a white racist who falls in love with a black woman or a Palestinian who swoons for a Jew. Everything about Ennis’ life tells him that the relationship is wrong — dangerous, even. And yet he can’t help himself. The heart wants what the heart wants.
UPDATE 2: Nikki Finke in the LA Weekly takes a slash-and-burn approach to explaining why Brokeback won’t win at the Academy Awards.
2 Responses
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N Says:
Jack Twist is selfish.
Really.
Did we see the same movie? Jack spending quality time with his son or the time when Jack finally stands up to his father-in-law telling him this was his son and his house and he should in essence respect that. Or how about the time with Lureen when it becomes obvious Jack is more concern about the well-being of his son than the mother.
Both Jack and Ennis loved their children and I would say their children faired well compared to the treatment of some deadbeat heterosexual men had towards their children.
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The Pop View Says:
Using words like “selfish” and “selfless” sound as if I am making personal judgments on the two characters; that is not my intention. I am simply analyzing the differences between how they handle the situation.
Jack needs to love someone. Since he can’t have Ennis, he seeks the solace of others. In comparison, Ennis goes inward and is incapable of having a relationship with anyone, including his daughter Junior. By the end of the movie, he seems to come out from behind his wall.
Perhaps I am being too harsh on Jack’s role as a father, but not by much. That Thanksgiving scene has far more to do with the conflict between Jack and his father-in-law than it does about Jack’s son. I think you would be pushing things to describe either man as being great parents. If you look at the time period, most men in America, let alone in the rural West, were very hands-off and absent as fathers.