message in the movies By Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

          

Brokeback Mountain  Rated R

Directed by Ang Lee. Starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal.   


Photo © Copyright Focus Features

 As you probably know by now, Brokeback Mountain is an award-winning and critically praised film about Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal), two men who begin a tentative but long-lasting relationship after meeting one summer tending sheep in Wyoming on Brokeback Mountain.  Since they fall in love in 1963, their homosexual relationship is not only forbidden, but potentially lethal --  a person could get themselves killed if word leaked out.  After their summer together, Ennis marries and starts a family, working as a ranch hand but barely making ends meet.  Jack does some rodeo riding and marries into money.  Four years down the road, Jack locates Ennis in Texas and sends a postcard in hopes of renewing the relationship; Jack is naïve and overly optimistic while Ennis is guarded and convinced that things will never work out.  There’s really not much plot-wise that is going to surprise anyone, but the film is nevertheless well-made and full of nuanced performances (especially from Ledger and Michelle Williams who plays his wife, with such real pain that it actually undercuts some of our sympathy for Ennis).  I think that I would have enjoyed this film more if it had eschewed the nudity (male and female) and explicit sex scenes (both orientations) of current films and opted for a more romantic and subdued tone consistent with the traditional underpinnings of this story.  I also despair of the fact that virtually all big “crossover” dramas with gay characters end inevitably with tragedy.  If the church could only do a better job acknowledging the inherent value of all people in the eyes of God, we might begin to see a few more joy-filled stories.

Pitchfork Rating: Two halos.  (An old-fashioned movie about forbidden love, that also works as a cry for tolerance.)    Three pitchforks.  (Nudity and sex scenes, swearing, extramarital relationships, extreme violence, male prostitutes, and rodeo clowns – hey, I don’t like 'em, never have.)

 

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