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Brokeback promos downplay queerness
Movie remains very, very gay
by Marcus McCann
Fulcrum Staff
THE GAY COWBOY movie right? In interviews, the movie’s male co-stars and director Ang Lee suggested otherwise, claiming that Brokeback Mountain is a universal story, more about emotion than about sexual orientation.
A same-sex love story, complete with anal sex scenes? A movie that deals with the characters’ self-loathing of their sexual orientation? And homophobic violence? Nah, not gay at all.
When ultra-butch gay icon Mark Whalberg announced the Golden Globe nominations last month, the verdict seemed to come down on Lee’s side. Both Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams got nods (indicating that it’s okay to make a gay movie, as long as you do super-hetero things while on set-like procreate).
Framing here works against politicking about the film. By setting the film (and the Proulx short story) in 1963 in America’s least populated state (Wyoming), audiences may feel smugly removed from the story. After all, the cultural stereotypes paint Midwestern America as a homogeneous Republican Bible Belt (as opposed to the urban seaboard).
And yet the self-hating, painfully closeted protagonists speak to the feelings of many contemporary North Americans caught on the wrong side of the orientation divide, and homophobic violence continues to be a serious concern, even in Canada’s supposedly tolerant urban centres.
Lee’s plea, then, is with straight audiences to see beyond the homosexual plot to the story’s “human” core. (Incidentally, I’d like to see the directors of hetero flicks make the same plea to queer audiences. But I won’t hold my breath.)
Will the film have much appeal outside of gay audiences? Perhaps. If it can connect with straight audiences, it will be foremost because of Lee’s deliberately paced story-telling. Two and a half hours is a stretch, certainly, but Lee lets the tale gently unwind to its inevitable conclusion.
The big-O Oscar performances from Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal tend toward goofy. Gyllenhaal, with his watery, cartoonish eyes, and Ledger, whose facial contortions undermine the stoic dialogue, overact when the script is silent.
Michelle Williams (of Dawson’s Creek pedigree) delivers the doe-eyed cuckold with teary sincerity. Low on dialogue, she mugs for the camera, looking off at the top corner of the screen. But then, the critics bought it.
As an aside, my anger with Williams’ Golden Globe nomination stems from her position in the film. The wronged wife-which was greatly elaborated upon in the adaptation from prose to film-is an important narrative element insomuch as it casts homosexuality as a “betrayal” of the heteronormative order. Critics ate it up in Far From Heaven, and I find Williams’ nomination for her rather insignificant and overwrought performance in Brokeback offensive.
The scenery is often quite breathtaking, although it’s sometimes so picturesque it looks blue-screened or mural-painted. Mountains. Creeks. Rocky trails. More mountains. And it’ll be too soon if I ever see another sheep.
As the movie slides into its final two acts, the scenery becomes increasingly claustrophobic and interior. Case in point: the one-shade-of-grey house in the penultimate scene perfectly captures the wide strokes of pain caused by the characters’ sublimated emotions.
And despite what Gyllenhaal, Ledger, and Lee say, Brokeback Mountain will undoubtedly become a canonical gay film.