Thank You Melissa

Melissa graciously offered accompany Phil and I to watch Brokeback Mountain, to provide a buffer, so as to avoid the obvious awkwardness after, god forbid, we enjoyed the film.

The three of us, with Manuel in tow, opted to check out the hippest spot in town at 11:10pm yesterday evening at the Grove, the fascist city center of LA. As we walked up and snickered about gay people, with our children's tickets in hand, we discovered, much to my surprise that the 11:10 Monday evening show was sold out. Dammit. That meant the front row or splitting up.

The movie begins. It is slow. Or patient.

The movie ends. I am impressed with how "big" it is. Phil is not. He yells at me, "then you liked the English Patient!"

Offended, I defend my position, "A film should be recognized for going for something huge. That doesn't make it a good movie."

Melissa is angry. She liked the movie.

Manuel's only comment, "Two guys next to me were holding hands."

There are a couple of supurb scenes. Heath Ledger's character, Innis (although I must admit I thought it was Anus for awhile at the beginning), is awesome. He reminded me of Call from Lonesome Dove, a quiet, rageful, decent man, who has no capacity for family and barely any for love. I still don't care for Jake Gyllenhal.

The film spans decades and there are always problems with doing something like that, ie Heath Ledgers daughter ends up being roughly his own age, and I guess it's a testament to how un-great the movie is, when I thinking in terms of Heath and Jake, even though I'm supposed to be wrapped up in the story.

My biggest problem with the movie is the first act. I don't buy the two guys falling in love. People will accuse me of homophobia, and they might well be right, because yes, I am probably a harder critic on believing two cowboys falling in love, as opposed to a dude falling for a hot chick. But that's part of the appeal of film, this idea of falling in love, completely out of control and against all convention. And I believe it CAN be done, but it just wasn't done well enough in this film. The sequence it pales in comparison to is sequence in the desert in Crouching Tiger.

The rest of the movie plays, although a lot of big, emotional scenes come out of nowhere, things happen years down the line that should have occurred earlier. But these are minor things....

My favorite scene is towards the end between Jake and Heath when they confront each other over their "failed" ability to live a life together. I think it was shot spectacularly. In fact, the whole movie was shot well, often you are in big close ups, seeing only the brim of a cowboy, hiding Heath's eyes, or back over shots, complete backs of characters. Wonderful.

The great press this movie is receiving can be explained in a couple of ways, 1) There is such a dearth of good films out there, that this appears really good. 2) Critics think the filmmakers have taken a big risk, so they want to let stuff slide 3) Critics think others will like the film, so they are jumping on the bandwagon.

If Syriana or Brokeback or Good Night and Good Luck get nominated and/or win best picture, this will be a mighy weak year for movies.