 |
Brokeback Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) by Ang Lee
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
DVD detailsActor: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Randy Quaid, Valerie Planche Director: Ang Lee Brand: NBC Universal Producer: Bill Pohlad Producer: Diana Ossana Writer: Diana Ossana Producer: James Schamus Producer: Jordy Randall Writer: Annie Proulx Writer: Larry McMurtry DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Format: AC-3, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen Picture Format: 1.85:1 Running Time: 134 minutes DVD Release Date: 2007-01-23 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Studio: Focus Features
DVD Reviews of Brokeback Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)DVD Review: Inconvenient truths... (plus comments about the Blu-ray edition) Summary: 5 Stars
I've added to and slightly revised this review, and appended comments about the Blu-ray edition.
I've waited almost two years to review this film: it took me that long to work up the courage to watch "Crash", the viewing of which seemed a prerequisite for my claiming any degree of objectivity or intellectual honesty in reviewing "Brokeback". (I've posted a review of that film, as well.) I also wanted to be certain I'd found the right things to say and the right way to say them. There are so many things to discuss about "Brokeback Mountain" they could fill a book. Hopefully, someone will write one (qv, Jerome Agel's "The Making of Kubrick's 2001", a fine book about another controversial film).
Of all the reviews, pro or con, the most-significant came from World Net Daily, an ultra-far-right religious publication. You'd expect its "Brokeback Mountain" review to be titled something like "Hollywood Liberals Aggressively Promote Homosexual Agenda". But, no -- it's "Rape of the Marlboro Man". (Yes!) The review argues that homosexuals are trying to appropriate the upright, decent, manly image of the cowboy to encourage acceptance of their own debased/depraved/perverted views of manhood.
One doesn't have to know much Western history to recognize that the traditional view of the cowboy as "the man on the white horse" doesn't bear close examination. Cowboys were rough-living men who drank, gambled, and whored with little restraint.
Cowboys and other Westerners were often solitary men - that's always been part of their mystique. (See "The Myth of the American Superhero" by Lawrence & Jewett.) Many left the East to get away from society, from government, from social pressures (including those to marry). From "The Last of the Mohicans" to "Lonesome Dove", frontiersmen have been laconic loners. (Well... Gus McCrae isn't exactly laconic. But Woodrow F Call makes up for it.)
Cowboys and other western pioneers lived in an overwhelmingly homosocial environment. Whores provided a convenient sexual outlet, whereas marriage brought with it social fetters. Men therefore looked to other men for companionship -- and sometimes other things.
The emotionally intimate relationships of Western males has been written about for a century and a half. Mark Twain observed homosexual behavior among prospectors. Charles Badger Clark's "The Lost Pardner", one of the all-time most-popular cowboy poems, outlines the near-sexual -- and explicitly misogynistic * -- relationship of two wranglers. Yet heterosexual males read it without embarrassment -- or seeming awareness of the poem's implications -- because the truth it speaks about intense male friendships likely masks its truth about male sexuality. Clark's "Bachin'" extols the delights of a female-free life ("...in our trouble list we never count a wife"). Its opening line -- "Our ways are hid; our trails are strange" -- and the later "Each has a reason why he's lone, but keeps it 'neath his hat" ares suggestive. Clark's less-familiar poem "My Enemy" ends with the adversaries not only making up, but also apparently making out. The implication is subtle, but Clark's writing shows such a consistently careful choice of words that it's difficult to read the meaning of "and when dark found us limp and jaded" otherwise.
Several Bret Harte stories express a startling homoeroticism. The men of "Tennessee's Partner" and "In the Tules" share a love for each other that's "consummated" only in the afterlife. The implied "marriage" of Tennessee and his male partner did not prevent this story from becoming one of Harte's most-popular, probably because it was written toward the end of an era when it was not uncommon for men to express effusive love for each other, and the Romantic fancy of lovers uniting in death had not yet faded. "Tennessee's Partner" is a fine example of hiding something in plain sight.
If "Brokeback Mountain" deviates from our view of the West, that view is the view presented by Hollywood and TV -- not the view of the people who actually lived and worked in the West. You cannot truly "rape" (in any sense of the word) someone or something that never existed.
The inconvenient truths are... Men like sex. When women aren't around (and sometimes when they are), they'll have it with each other. And -- yes -- even unerringly masculine men will engage in mutual sodomy (as Jack and Ennis do), however unbelievable that might seem to heterosexual males reading this. (I speak from direct experience.) "Brokeback Mountain" is a gut punch to the American view of what constitutes "masculinity", which is why it attracted the outrage of groups and people that might otherwise ignore films with homosexual characters or themes.
Those who'd like to investigate this subject in greater depth should read "Queer Cowboys" by Chris Packard and "Male-Male Intimacy in Early America" by William Benemann.
Larry McMurtry has famously said "the story was just sitting there, waiting to be told". (For a writer notorious for demythologizing the West, why hadn't _he_ told it? **) Yet it /has/ been told, many times. "Brokeback Mountain" doesn't stand in isolation, but is firmly in the tradition of stories about frontiersmen sharing marriage-like relationships with indigenous males or other frontiersmen. *** "Brokeback Mountain" is simply the first time a serious writer has told that story without ignoring or "coding" its sexual elements. ****
Larry McMurtry bragged about using virtually all the dialog from the short story. This is not true. Some significant material was removed, such as Ennis telling Jack of the overwhelming sexual attraction he feels for him, and Jack's telling Ennis why he finds sodomy with him so pleasurable. (I asked a bisexual horseman whether Jack's understanding of the physiology involved was correct, and he said it was.)
McMurtry's novels don't shy away from sex, but he isn't interested in graphic depictions, and "Brokeback Mountain"'s film treatment reflects this. As late as a year before filming began, the screenplay had the camera coyly averting its eye as Ennis mounted Jack.
But McMurtry doesn't limit himself to avoiding graphic sex -- he tries to de-sexualize the story. Though Annie Proulx describes Jack and Ennis as engaging in hot, sweaty sex up on Brokeback, the film shows them only briefly rolling around -- and that through Aguirre's binoculars. More significantly, the screenplay omits an important moment in their final tryst -- Jack putting his hand between Ennis's thighs to warm it, while Ennis unbuttons Jack's shirt.
These omissions support the only valid criticism of the film -- it's overly reserved. Its basic reserve is a good thing -- the story easily lends itself to overwrought melodrama. Had the direction or acting been not so restrained, the effect would have been ludicrous, and "Brokeback Mountain" would have died a quick and unlamented death.
But the restraint is excessive. The film fails to fully show what the short story makes clear -- 20 years haven't dimmed Ennis and Jack's crude lust for each other. We need to see them, on that final camping trip, pulling each other's clothes off and wrestling in front of the fire, kissing each other as violently as they had in front of Ennis's apartment. This scene would make their final argument and Ennis's ultimate acknowledgement of their mutual love all the more poignant and pathetic (in the good sense).
As fine as Ang Lee's direction is (it's equivalent to walking on snow without leaving footprints), Peter Bogdanovich might have been a bit less "arty" and might have better caught the intensity of Ennis and Jack's relationship, without stepping over the line into melodrama. (Think of the pool-table scene in "The Last Picture Show".) And in the fantasy world of "if only", imagine the same script and actors directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with a Bernard Herrmann score. (Before you protest, note that "Brokeback Mountain" is, thematically, very much a Hitchcock story.)
The religious right would like people to believe movie reviewers are a liberal lot consciously promoting "the homosexual agenda", and that "Brokeback Mountain" provided the perfect opportunity. Rubbish. Reviewers -- even those as intellectually shallow and confused as Michael Medved -- recognized a great film when they saw it. "Brokeback Mountain" speaks a truth many people want to suppress -- men become emotionally involved with each other, and have sex with each other, just as men and women do.
Indeed -- and I emphasize this point to any uncomfortable hetereo males who've read this far -- men can and do have intense emotional relationships with each other /without/ sexual desire. I've had such relationships with hetero men, and know there are many straight guys out there who want emotional -- though not sexual -- intimacy with other men. Unfortunately, they often have to go to queer men for it, because most hetero men are just too cowardly.
But is "Brokeback Mountain" _truly_ a great film? Well, it's an /iconic film -- as iconic as 2001, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, Chinatown, Citizen Kane, King Kong, Network (another Best Picture loser), The Maltese Falcon, Snow White, or The Wizard of Oz. Great films aren't necessarily iconic -- but an iconic film is, by definition, great. *****
"Brokeback Mountain" has also entered pop culture, perhaps indelibly, even among people who haven't seen the film. When a female reporter used "Brokeback" references in a piece about Vladimir Putin's bare-chested fishing expedition, few there were who didn't get the joke. And "I wish I knew how to quit you" is likely to become a lasting catch phrase, just as "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" and "I'm shocked... shocked!" have.
So why did "Brokeback Mountain" lose Best Picture? If Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine hadn't opened their stupid traps, the answer might have remained equivocal. But it seems that "Crash" -- a film with mixed reviews that appeared on few best-picture lists -- was nominated to provide an alternative for those who had personal (rather than artistic) reasons for rejecting "Brokeback Mountain".
Tony Curtis (nee, Bernard Schwartz) -- who has unapologetically admitted to having sex with men (see the Wikipedia bio) -- should have _some_ feeling for what it means to belong to a discriminated-against minority. Both he and Mr. Borgnine have worked with gay men and women (on both sides of the camera), and ought to have the common sense to realize that attacking "Brokeback Mountain" -- on other than artistic grounds -- was a slap in the face to their queer colleagues. ****** Despite Mr. Borgnine's averral that John Wayne would not have tolerated "Brokeback Mountain", I suspect "The Duke" -- assuming the film truly did offend him -- would simply have kept his mouth shut (at least in public).
An anti-parallel could be drawn with the 1947 Best-Picture winner, "Gentleman's Agreement", an intelligent film about anti-Semitism, though hardly of the quality justifying a Best-Picture nomination, let alone a win. But Hollywood's demographic is strongly Jewish, so it's not surprising it was nominated and won, simply because it corresponded with the interests of that demographic. ******* Imagine the reaction if a gentile actor had said he'd no intention of seeing the film because of its subject matter!
"Hollywood" had the opportunity to award "Best Picture" to a film that truly deserved the honor, if only because it disrupted the usual order of things, and did it so well. As a resepcted LA reviewer remarked the day following the ceremony, Hollywood had finally demonstrated (if any proof were needed) that the Academy Awards were meaningless.
Is the Story Plausible?
It's significant that no one -- not even the most rabidly anti-gay fundamentalists -- has raised any objection to "Brokeback Mountain"'s plausibility. Of course, fundamentalists /wouldn't/ object, as it would contradict their assertion that homosexual behavior is a consciously chosen perversion. The seeming naturalness of Ennis and Jack's attraction is arguably the most-disturbing thing about the story.
Ennis and Jack's tale is completely plausible. People who think "real men" don't have sex with each other -- or God forbid -- kiss each other, or fall in love, don't know much about what goes on in the world. I've known queer men who would beat John Wayne in a butch-off and could cold-cock The Duke in a fair fight.
An appreciation for the male physique -- which is only one step removed from sexual attraction -- is hardly uncommon among heterosexual males. (Heterosexual men engage in bodybuilding primarily to improve their looks, not their health.) I saw it in my 100%-hetero father's reaction to Douglas Fairbanks' (lack of) costume in "The Thief of Bagdhad". And highly sexed hetero males sometimes experiment with homosexual behavior. (I was publicly out in college, and two notoriously womanizing male acquaintances came on to me simply because they were curious.)
Men are sometimes confused about their sexual orientation. I've met hetero men who told me they were afraid of waking up one morning and discovering they were queer. They likely had sexual feelings for other men they didn't understand or know how to handle.
Ennis and Jack's mutual attraction is a normal thing, and doesn't need an explanation, any more than Rhett and Scarlett's does. And Scarlett's interest in Rhett is unabashedly sexual, but no one sees much wrong in that. ("He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. ...his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate's appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished.") Which should be no surprise to anybody.
Watching the film for a fifth or sixth time, on Blu-ray, I remain impressed with Michelle Williams's heartbreaking performance (particularly the short scene where Ennis cruelly dismisses their marriage, and she tells him what she's finally figured out), and the scene in which Jack's mother asks Ennis to come back. She wants to spend time with someone who truly loved her son -- which her appallingly nasty husband never did.
Comments on the Music
I was surprised at "Brokeback Mountain" winning Best Score, as there is so _little_ score. Yet, it is the _lack_ of scoring that contributes so much to "Brokeback Mountain"'s dramatic punch -- it would be nowhere as good a film if it had a full score. It's probably the first film score to win an Oscar because of its non-existence.
Bernard Herrmann famously said that the purpose of music is to establish an emotional connection between what's going on up on the screen and the audience -- the composer had to fill in what the director could not or would not show. Herrmann was a master of film music because he focused on what was /not/ being said or shown. An outstanding example occurs in "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" during the flashback of Gregory Peck killing a German soldier. In just a few bars of music, Herrmann conveys everything Peck is thinking and feeling.
But most composers score much less imaginatively than Herrmann, merely underlining what we're seeing or hearing, rather than enhancing or complementing it. Too often the music /tells/ the audience how to react to the scene. That creates a distancing effect, where the emotion is conveyed more by the music than by the acting.
In "Brokeback Mountain", the music is almost all atmosphere. There are no Leitmotivs (other than the melancholic guitar theme, which sometimes arrives to represent Ennis and Jack's relationship), and the music rarely underlines either thoughts or events. Consider Ennis and Jack's reunion, their ecstatic embrace, and Alma's appalled reaction to seeing her husband kissing another man with more passion than he's ever shown /her/. Though this scene seemingly cries out for music, there is none! We get the direct emotions of the situation, uncolored and unfiltered.
This was likely intentional. Annie Proulx says she's not a "sentimental" writer; I suspect Ennis and Jack's relationship (which, let's be honest, is -- even at that point in the story -- far more sexual than romantic) would seem more than a little silly if it were "enhanced" by music.
On the rare occasions when the music does reflect the scene's affect, Santaolalla's scoring is spare, subtle, and unclichéd. This is a remarkable score that shows, in an era where 70% or more of most films' running time is scored, how less can be more.
Comments on DVD Quality
Projection quality in American theaters is generally mediocre or worse -- inadequate brightness, muddy/smeary/dirty prints, flat color, lack of overall sharpness, etc.
DVDs and LVs tend to automatically "look better" than what we see in the theater, simply because removing the projection lens and screen improves sharpness/detail and increases contrast. Transfers from the negative (rather than an IP or projection print) effect further improvements in sharpness, detail, color accuracy, and saturation.
But these improvements aren't always aesthetically desirable. The cinematographer normally lights the film knowing how what's front of the camera will "translate" to the final projection print. The biggest change is a loss of shadow detail, which can be used to advantage (eg, the substitution of a piece of cardboard for Robby's left leg in the final scene of "Forbidden Planet"). When the DVD transfer restores the "lost" detail, we see things we weren't supposed to.
For "Brokeback Mountain", these improvements work against the film. The generally dark, dingy quality of many scenes, that so fits the film's tone, is lightened, or lost altogether. Colors are now sometimes too bright and saturated, particularly in scenes where they shouldn't be. There's far too much shadow detail -- Aguirre's trailer office now looks relatively clean and neat, and Jack's family home not quite so dirty or run-down.
Though there's now a "deluxe" multi-DVD edition, its transfer appears to be no different from the original single disk's. I hope someday the director and cinematographer - working from the negative -- will time each scene for the appropriate density, shadow detail, color saturation, etc. We need to see "Brokeback Mountain" as it was (probably) intended. The current DVD does not, as far as I can determine, present it properly.
That's the DVD, of course. See the following remarks on the Blu-ray.
Comments on Blu-ray Quality
I've remarked in other reviews that the /only/ way to see a movie is /at home/, from an HD source on a big display (50" or larger). This couldn't be more true of "Brokeback Mountain".
I saw the film twice theatrically, at different theaters. Particularly with the indoor scenes, the projection print was a muddy mess, though I felt at the time it was appropriate to the film's atmosphere. The DVD struck me (and a few other people) as overly clean-looking.
The Blu-ray changes all that. We are now seeing (in effect) the camera negative, in high resolution. The most-significant improvement is not in sharpness and detail (though there are huge gains), but in tonality. The BD images truly capture what it's like to stand outside on an overcast day, or the feeling one has in someone's living room or kitchen. Annie Proulx says she writes stories about peoples' relationships with their environments (both physical and social), and the Blu-ray transfer captures Ennis and Jack's environments very well.
Though dramas do not generally benefit much from high definition, this one is an exception.
* Clark almost always represents relationships with women as encumbrances, or just plain unnecessary.
** Though Gus and Woodrow are portrayed as close friends of many years' standing, their personalities -- the ever-randy, ever-whoring Gus, and the emotionally constipated ur-loner Woodrow -- seem consciously calculated to block the remotest possibility of anything sexual between them, even something as unthreatening to the sense of one's masculinity as "a chaw fer a chaw". After reading "Dead Man's Walk" and "Comanche Moon", you conclude that two such utterly different people couldn't possibly have been the lifelong friends they're portrayed as in "Lonesome Dove".
*** While we're at it, let's throw in "The Epic of Gilgmamesh". The Gilgmamesh / Enkidu relationship is intensely homoerotic and vehemently misogynistic. Their society did not proscribe sexual relations between men; the Mitchell realization gives alternate versions that indicate they engaged in mutual sodomy.
**** Richard Amory's classic "Loon" novels, though well-written, don't count. Though giving the illusion of reality -- Amory appears to have known far more about the realities of living in the wild than J. F. Cooper ever did -- they're fantasies set in an all-male world.
***** An iconic short story became an iconic film. The current consensus is that "Brokeback Mountain" is not only the best short story "The New Yorker" has yet published, but one of the greatest American short stories, period. Without intending to, Annie Proulx hit the nail on the head. It's the work she will most-likely be remembered for.
****** In "If Chins Could Kill", Bruce Campbell offers high praise for Ernest Borgnine's professionalism. But his professionalism apparently doesn't extend to having the sense not to defecate in your own nest.
******* The 1947 Academy Award nominations were filled with ironies. "Crossfire" was also about anti-Semitism -- a soldier is murdered simply because he's Jewish -- but the film is based on the novel "The Brick Foxhole", in which the victim is homosexual. And the author of "Gentleman's Agreement", Laura Z. Hobson, would later pen "Consenting Adult", a novel about her gay son's coming out.
More Brokeback Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) reviews: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Description of Brokeback Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)Winner of three Academy Awards®, including Best Director, the movie that became a cultural phenomenon is now available in a remarkable 2-Disc Collector's Edition. Relive the sweeping epic that explores the lives of two young men (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal), a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy, who meet in the summer of 1963 and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection. With all-new bonus features, never-before-seen footage and highly collectible postcards, this definitive set magnifies the emotion, drama and power of one of cinema's most groundbreaking films. Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Linda Cardellini, Randy Quaid, Scott Michael Campbell, Anna Faris, David Harbour Directed by: Ang Lee A sad, melancholy ache pervades Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's haunting, moving film that, like his other movies, explores societal constraints and the passions that lurk underneath. This time, however, instead of taking on ancient China, 19th-century England, or '70s suburbia, Lee uses the tableau of the American West in the early '60s to show how two lovers are bound by their expected roles, how they rebel against them, and the repercussions for each of doing so--but the romance here is between two men. Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are two itinerant ranchers looking for work in Wyoming when they meet and embark on a summer sheepherding job in the shadow of titular Brokeback Mountain. The taciturn Ennis, uncommunicative in the extreme, finds himself opening up around the gregarious Jack, and the two form a bond that surprisingly catches fire one cold night out in the wilderness. Separating at the end of the summer, each goes on to marry and have children, but a reunion years later proves that, if anything, their passion for each other has grown significantly. And while Jack harbors dreams of a life together, the tight-lipped Ennis is unable to bring himself to even consider something so revolutionary. Its open, unforced depiction of love between two men made Brokeback an instant cultural touchstone, for both good and bad, as it was tagged derisively as the "gay cowboy movie," but also heralded as a breakthrough for mainstream cinema. Amidst all the hoopla of various agendas, though, was a quiet, heartbreaking love story that was both of its time and universal--it was the quintessential tale of star-crossed lovers, but grounded in an ever-changing America that promised both hope and despair. Adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from Annie Proulx's short story, the movie echoes the sparse bleakness of McMurtry's The Last Picture Show with its fading of the once-glorious West; but with Lee at the helm, it also resembles The Ice Storm, as it showed the ripple effects of a singular event over a number of people. As always, Lee's work with actors is unparalleled, as he elicits graceful, nuanced performances from Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway as the wives affected overtly and subliminally by their husbands' affair, and Gyllenhaal brings surprising dimensions to a character that could have easily just been a puppy dog of a boy. It's Ledger, however, who's the breakthrough in the film, and his portrait of an emotionally repressed man both undone and liberated by his feelings is mesmerizing and devastating. Spare in style but rich with emotion, Brokeback Mountain earns its place as a classic modern love story. --Mark Englehart
|
 |