So Easy to Quit You . . . or, The Love That Dare Only Mumble Its Name
One of my favorite things to do when I stay at hotels, as I did this weekend with Sadeeq and the girls, is to order movies to watch after the girls are asleep. No, not those kinds of movies (get your mind out of the gutter please), but real, honest-to-goodness movies, the kind of movies I used to go to theaters to see in the days when I used to be able to indulge my movie-buff tendencies. So it happens that this weekend I ordered me up a helpin' of Brokeback Mountain, the much touted and critically acclaimed film by Ang Lee. Not that there's any gosh darn thing wrong with that, ma'am.
The movie surprised me, and its biggest surprise -- for me -- was that it just wasn't a very good movie. Maybe it all boils down to the question of expectations. Strange as it may seem, I came to this movie with pretty high expectations. It was critically acclaimed, and it was directed by Ang Lee, whose work I admire. I expected, at the very least, beautiful cinematography, a moving love story, and a great performance by Heath Ledger. Well sir, one out of three ain't so good.
It's not a terrible film, and it deserves some thoughtful criticism, but that's been done to death, and I'm too tired to be very thoughtful about it, anyway. Without further ado, then, I present a series of random thoughts about the movie:
* I would estimate that I caught about one half to forty percent of the dialogue in this movie. Heath Ledger speaks throughout the film as though he were some sort of hick Edgar Bergen who is so despondent over the loss of Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd that he can't quit the ventriloquist act. Ledger is working sans dummy, but I still only saw his lips move a couple -- four, tops -- times in the entire film. I kept wanting to scream, "Enunciate, for crying out loud!" I mean, come on, did John Wayne or Clint Eastwood have this problem?
* Brokeback Mountain is not a Western, and it is actually at its worst when it uses some of the tropes of the movie Western. Though the scenes on Brokeback Mountain are sometimes beautiful and elegaic in the manner of classic Westerns, they are a constant reminder that the Western genre is, by and large, antithetical to the love story Ang Lee wants to tell.
* There's a plot point about the fate of one of the characters that is annoyingly unclear. If this were a better movie, I might have used the adverb "exasperatingly," or even "tantalizingly."
* A good love story must convince its audience that the two main characters are actually in love, and a great one will suggest to its audience why those characters are in love. This movies fails at the latter, and only accomplishes the former by the skin of its teeth.
* While the film is not generally heavy-handed, it occasionally sneaks across the border into heavy-handedness, as a way to break the monotony of the long stretches in the lands of Good Taste and Subtlety-- come to think of it, it's rather like the way Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) sneaks off to Mexico to pick up male prostitutes and tide himself over until his next trip to Brokeback Mountain. Take the scene, for instance, in which Heath Ledger beats up a couple of foul-mouthed hippies on the Fourth of July while fireworks burst in mid-air and make an iconic silhouette of his figure against the night sky. . . it's a bit much, yes, but it's also -- in a weird way -- one of the scenes I enjoyed the most. Maybe it was only a shorthand way of making the Heath Ledger character likable. After all, nothing says "likable" quite as well as kicking some hippie butt on the Fourth of July.
The movie surprised me, and its biggest surprise -- for me -- was that it just wasn't a very good movie. Maybe it all boils down to the question of expectations. Strange as it may seem, I came to this movie with pretty high expectations. It was critically acclaimed, and it was directed by Ang Lee, whose work I admire. I expected, at the very least, beautiful cinematography, a moving love story, and a great performance by Heath Ledger. Well sir, one out of three ain't so good.
It's not a terrible film, and it deserves some thoughtful criticism, but that's been done to death, and I'm too tired to be very thoughtful about it, anyway. Without further ado, then, I present a series of random thoughts about the movie:
* I would estimate that I caught about one half to forty percent of the dialogue in this movie. Heath Ledger speaks throughout the film as though he were some sort of hick Edgar Bergen who is so despondent over the loss of Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd that he can't quit the ventriloquist act. Ledger is working sans dummy, but I still only saw his lips move a couple -- four, tops -- times in the entire film. I kept wanting to scream, "Enunciate, for crying out loud!" I mean, come on, did John Wayne or Clint Eastwood have this problem?
* Brokeback Mountain is not a Western, and it is actually at its worst when it uses some of the tropes of the movie Western. Though the scenes on Brokeback Mountain are sometimes beautiful and elegaic in the manner of classic Westerns, they are a constant reminder that the Western genre is, by and large, antithetical to the love story Ang Lee wants to tell.
* There's a plot point about the fate of one of the characters that is annoyingly unclear. If this were a better movie, I might have used the adverb "exasperatingly," or even "tantalizingly."
* A good love story must convince its audience that the two main characters are actually in love, and a great one will suggest to its audience why those characters are in love. This movies fails at the latter, and only accomplishes the former by the skin of its teeth.
* While the film is not generally heavy-handed, it occasionally sneaks across the border into heavy-handedness, as a way to break the monotony of the long stretches in the lands of Good Taste and Subtlety-- come to think of it, it's rather like the way Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) sneaks off to Mexico to pick up male prostitutes and tide himself over until his next trip to Brokeback Mountain. Take the scene, for instance, in which Heath Ledger beats up a couple of foul-mouthed hippies on the Fourth of July while fireworks burst in mid-air and make an iconic silhouette of his figure against the night sky. . . it's a bit much, yes, but it's also -- in a weird way -- one of the scenes I enjoyed the most. Maybe it was only a shorthand way of making the Heath Ledger character likable. After all, nothing says "likable" quite as well as kicking some hippie butt on the Fourth of July.
posted by Kate Marie | 1:40 AM | Permalink
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4 comments
4 Comments:
KM, this is not a movie I want to see, but after reading your review -- which was better than many written by the pros -- I wouldn't see it even if they cut out all offending scenes. Can't hear the dialog? Then what's the point?
Not too long ago, the Rugrat was assigned to watch the pilot for (of?) The Evidence. It was a good thing we recorded it, as we constantly missed dialog and had to back-up and play some parts several times to catch key words. What a pain.
I just watched it . . . in 30 seconds. . with bunnies! Seems the preferred viewing method.
funny you should mention this movie as I just watched it myself last week for the first time. My reaction was pretty close to yours...it was in my opinion..just a boring movie. Heath Ledgers performance, was to heavily influenced, I thought, by his determined choice of talking every line as if he had a mouth full of chew....thus the mumbling...and I thought he made this choice to curb his Aussie accent perhaps?..I had anticipated a much more "Ford" like look to the movie also, which it did not achieve. All in all, after all the hub bub ...I just found it to be a slow and predictable film with the two main characters being self-centered and not really likable.
Hey, Templeton! I love your description of Ledger speaking every line as if he had a mouthful of chew . . . and I forgot about the Australian accent thing. Maybe that explains it.
And, yeah, they did seem kind of self-centered. I think Ledger was supposed to seem stoic and self-sacrificing, but he just seemed constipated.
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