blackvelocities

Listen to the Brokeback Mountain Soundtrack

Stream the entire soundtrack.
Sounds good even at 64 kbs.

Via Arjan Writes.  Thanks Arjan!

Brokeback Humor I Actually Like

Via Film Experience Blog
Thanks Nat!

Some of the best bits from other reviews

ModFab On...Brokeback Mountain

"While many will talk about the universality of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, let me be the first to say: it simply isn't true. Oh, I'm sure heterosexuals will have a great time watching the film, but this isn't their story, and to water it down with claims of universality is to do it a great disservice. This particular tale could not have happened to anyone but two men...it is a hard, spare story, albeit one told with eloquence. (Their lovemaking is often undistinguishable from boys' roughousing, and occasionally ends in fistfights.) Ennis and Jack lack the vocabulary and the life experience to process their desires; brutality and roughness sit comfortably in their psyches alongside tenderness and gentility. Unlike any other film you can think of, BROKEBACK offers up a wholly masculine vision of homosexuality; these are men thousands of miles from any major urban center, who do not recognize themselves in the stereotype...who have never heard of Judy Garland, and don't want to."

Love, Actually.  Reviewed by Karen Durbin in Elle

"It's impossible to imagine these two country boys in the claustrophobic confines of a big city, where they could live together and be somewhat safe. With understated eloquence, Gyllenhaal and Ledger give Jack and Ennis such specific life that we understand not only how deeply they belong to the rural West but also how deeply they belong with each other."

Cowboys in Love... With Each Other.  Reviewed by Karen Durbin in the New York Times

"When Annie Proulx's short story about two cowboys in love appeared in The New Yorker nearly eight years ago, it was so startling and powerful that for many people, the experience of reading it remains a vivid, almost physical memory. As for those shirts, the image is unique and indelible: hidden years earlier in the back of a closet, they hang from a single nail, the outer, denim one, bloodied by an old blow, the second, a torn and dirty plaid, carefully tucked inside the first, its sleeves worked down into the other's sleeves, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. It's an emblem of love so plain and homely that it could only be true."

Why Brokeback Mountain isn’t a gay film

Because a lot of gay men (maybe most) just don’t get it that’s why. If you could have heard the queens at the Denver showing you’d know what I mean.

One of the pivotal scenes in the story is when, after four years apart, Jack and Ennis meet again and kiss passionately; Ennis temporarily forgetting that it is in full view of his wife, Alma. When we saw the shocked look on Alma’s face, much of the audience here in Denver broke out in “Oooooooo!”s and “Ohhhhhhh-ho-ho-ho!”s, just as if they were watching a rerun of Dawson’s Creek, licking their lips thinking they had just been let in on the dish. Sigh. With Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana and Ang Lee there I wanted to crawl under my seat.

Anyone who has spent more than a few moments thinking about it and who is smart enough knows that in contemporary parlance the word ‘gay’ cannot be disassociated from political and cultural meanings. Brokeback Mountain, so far as I can tell, has nothing to do with any of those meanings.  Are Jack and Ennis in love with each other? Obviously. Are they in anguish because they can’t love each other openly? Obviously. Would they describe themselves as gay? No. It’s 1963 Wyoming.

Still have attitude? Don’t take it from me then. Go to the source here and here.

Annie Proulx didn't write this story to describe what we call gay culture or gay people.  Annie and Ang Lee both say that their motivations in writing the story and bringing it to film had nothing to do with gay rights.  They simply wanted to describe the lives of these particular cowboys.  It must be said however, that in acknowledging the broader theme of love itself they also acknowledge that this film will have broad effects in our cultural discourse.  Everyone involved with this film knows that.

Gay people, more than anyone else, have polarized society into ‘straight’ and ‘gay’. It could be argued that this has become a politically necessary distinction but I think a lot of people actually take comfort in this distinction. In the modern sense of the word, being gay means more than having a same sex sexual preference.  Given all the political and cultural baggage heaped on the word gay, describing Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist as gay is both an inaccurate and limited description of them. We shouldn’t be surprised when Jake Gyllenhaal uses the word ‘straight’ when explaining for the hundredth time why Brokeback Mountain isn’t a gay cowboy movie. We’ve made sure he can only use two words to describe these guys.

No one associated with this film has said anything that denies the obvious fact that this is a story about the love of two men.  That’s why they did this film.  That’s what made them interested in this material.  They got to tell a beautiful, compelling story that had never been told before.

When Jake and Heath Ledger and Ang Lee try to refocus the discussion and describe Brokeback Mountain as a universal love story I think they are simply trying to do justice to the  characters and story about which they clearly care so much and to which they gave so much of themselves. Bless Jake and Heath for simply wanting Jack and Ennis to be able to speak for themselves.

In some senses Brokeback Mountain is “a great American love story”. I hope that it is for a lot of people. Some people seem to feel that describing the film in such broad terms somehow homogenizes the film and is an attempt to deny or distract from its core reality. This is a great American love story specifically about the love shared by two men. It is free of politics. It is free of pretension. It is a forthright and simple love and that's what makes it great and American.  It makes no reference whatsoever to what we recognize as gay culture.

Brokeback Mountain is not post-gay it's pre-gay.

We really do diminish the film if we - we in the gay community in particular - think of Brokeback Mountain as “the gay cowboy movie”

Sorry girls, you don’t get to own this film. Please, for the good of us all, remove your claws.

Another document of their lives - Further thoughts on Brokeback Mountain

Well it took me a few days to reconcile what I saw in the film and what I knew from the short story.  I walked out of the film feeling a whole range of emotions.  No surprise there but along with all that I had this funny feeling that I didn't feel quite right about something.  It took a few days for the major emotions to kind of calm down before I could start to see these smaller more elusive emotions more clearly.

One of the friends I went to see the film with and I were discussing it afterwards and we both agreed that we came away wanting more time with Ennis and Jack.... just Ennis and Jack.  We both agreed that the film had spent less time showing the growth of their friendship than the short story.  While we felt somewhat disappointed in this we also agreed that a more thorough look at the beginnings of their love was traded, in the interest of time, for the elaboration on their time apart which mostly had been only referentially or obliquely described in the story.  I had read a review in which the reviewer had come away with the impression that Ennis and Jack had essentially fallen in love only after they had sex.  It's easy to see how, without having read the story, someone could have come away with that impression.  I don't like the idea that someone would have that impression about Jack and Ennis.

And there were other differences between the story and the film.  The elaboration of Jack and Ennis' time apart showed us even more clearly just how unhappy they were when they were apart. Jack is frustrated and desperately lonely.  His life seems a sham.  He grows resentful and you can see the hope that sustains him flicker.  Ennis too is desperately lonely and he withdraws even further.  He never completely comes to grips with his love and the anguish this causes him is sometimes expressed in anger and violence.

I began to see that these differences between story and film could be understood when I thought more about the influence of Larry McMurtry as screenwriter.  In his own stories McMurtry rarely gives his characters a break.  Everything is presented in an unvarnished state.  Read Streets of Laredo and you'll see what I mean.  McMurtry never holds your hand.  You are left to feel how you feel.  You come to like or love or respect his characters because of what they do not because you are being lulled in that direction by McMurtry.  I like that about his writing.

I have come to see the film as another document of Jack and Ennis' lives.  It's a stunning, beautiful, eloquent document and I am so thankful for it.

As with the story, I will need to see the film again and again.  What did people do when they couldn't own a film on DVD?

Impressions of Brokeback Mountain

I was privileged to be able to attend a special screening of Brokeback Mountain last night in Denver.  It was the closing night film for the 28th Denver International Film Festival.  Ang Lee, Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana were in attendance and Ang Lee was awarded the DIFF Lifetime Achievement Award.

Before I discuss the movie I need to discuss my feelings about the short story.  When I read the story back in 2002, by which time it was a part of the collection Close Range, it left an indelible mark on me.  I come from a family of Texas cattle ranchers and spent my formative years in Texas and in rural southwest Colorado.  As a westerner but more particularly as a person with my family and childhood history, the story struck a deep resonant chord within me.  Brokeback Mountain really changed me.  It put me back in touch with things that I thought I would be separated from forever.  I have come to relate to this story as if it were true and its characters real.  I feel as if Ennis and Jack are people I know.

This led to my overwhelming concern about the film adaptation.  Namely that it give full respect to Jack and Ennis and that it give honor to their love.

Now it must be understood that concerning most things where people are involved, I am a cynical person by nature.  Given the soulless pabulum that has been the chief export of Hollywood for too many years now, I was truly frightened when I heard that Brokeback would be put to film.  I was preparing for the worst and to be very angry.

Then came the reviews from Venice and Toronto.  I was reluctant to believe it at first but then came to accept that Ang Lee had been careful with the story and exactingly faithful to the text.  Let it suffice to say that my relief was almost boundless.  I wept when I read those first reviews.  I also felt somewhat chastened.  I felt I should have had more faith (something which doesn’t come to me naturally) in the director of “The Ice Storm” and in Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.

So about the film.

Please, read the story. But expect to come away from the film with different impressions and understandings.  Be prepared to think differently about Jack and Ennis.  Be prepared to understand them more fully. 

Like Annie Proulx’s writing, the film was by equal turns rapturous and devastating.  Both exquisitely beautiful and gut-punched painful.  Do not go to this movie thinking that Ang Lee has thoughtfully sprinkled in some magic movie dust that will leave you feeling good.  You will walk out feeling emotionally drained and conflicted.  The conflicted feeling will last for days.  My explicit advice is that the film be seen in an environment that will promote a feeling of intimacy.  See it with someone you love.  You will willingly bear your heart.  You will feel vulnerable.  Try to find a time and place where you are not left feeling too cold.  Because that need not be the feeling you are left with.

Heath Ledger fully becomes Ennis del Mar.  He is wracked by pain, frustration, fear and guilt that never completely leave him.  Jake Gyllenhaal fully becomes Jack Twist.  He has a kind of hopeful joy you feel you can drink in great healing gulps.  But Ennis cannot be completely healed, he can only be temporarily relieved and the anguish that this causes in Jack is fully realized through Jake.  Ennis’ and Jack’s love is made fully evident by Heath and Jake in actions and expressions both great and small.

The music of Gustavo Santaolalla is pitch perfect and the screenplay of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana was flawless.

I don’t feel the need to elaborate on the performances of Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway or the cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto.  They were each exceptional and have been praised elsewhere.  They were not the focus of my concern although if they had not been so exceptional the film would have been crippled.

I am honestly grateful to Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ang Lee for so lovingly giving Ennis and Jack and their story to us and I will write them to say so.

You will be changed by this film.