This is a very well made movie, beautifully photographed and powerfully acted.
But I must say that I'm perplexed by the intense admiration some are feeling for it; I wasn't dazzled by it, or even particularly moved.
And as for all the hype about how groundbreaking it is? Nonsense. This is precisely the same story that straight people have been telling about gay people for decades: They are unhappy creatures who must suffer in eternal emotional agony for their unnatural urges; if they dare to dream of living a "normal" life, of actually being happy, they must be punished for their arrogance with death.
And E. Annie Proulx, the writer of the story on which this movie is based, is none too subtle in letting us now that she does see these men as unnatural and immoral; just look at the names she's given them -- Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar. Twisted and marred, that's how Proulx sees these men.
It's how everyone else in the movie sees them, too, which is certainly not an unrealistic depiction of life in 1963, when the movie opens. But the movie takes us into the earlly 1980s, and it seems awfully unlikely that neither man would ever find a sympathetic ear, or hear a single news report on the increased visibility of the gay civil rights movement. Jack, in particular, is desperate enough for a happy gay relationship that it boggles the mind to think that the best he can do is crossing the border for back-alley pickups in Juarez.
There's something depressing about seeing this tired old story hyped as some sort of breakthrough. Wake me up when we get a movie about a gay couple who have a happy long-term relationship before dying of natural causes late in life; that will be the real revolution.
(I do want to make note of the very nice small performance by Roberta Maxwell, who plays Jack's mother; she's on screen for only three or four minutes, late in the movie, and doesn't have much dialogue, but every glance and every facial expression speak volumes. Beautiful work.)
2 comments:
I don't think the film is telling us that gay men must suffer for their unnatural urges. I think it's a cry of anguish for those who can't accept love in the form in which it arrives. jack is ruined because ennis can't accept it. ennis is obviously ruined. alma is ruined because ennis can't accept it. etc...
and yes gay men who cannot accept it do suffer. And I don't think that closet hell is a bad message to be sending out.
agreed on roberta maxwell --devastatingly spot on.
Welcome, Nathaniel; happy to see you here, as I'm a big fan of your blog.
There is admittedly a fine line between making the valid observation that gay men do suffer as a result of society's bigotry, and making the false claim that gay men deserve that suffering and that bigotry.
And I think BBM does an artful job of straddling that line in such a way that different viewers will see it as landing on different sides of the line.
For me, there are two things that land the movie on the wrong side of the line. First, there's not a single voice anywhere in the movie to tell Jack and Ennis that they aren't the disordered beasts they believe themselves to be; they go to their graves believing that their love is wrong and must be kept hidden. That there might be no such voices in 1963 is plausible; that Ennis might never hear one in rural Montana is less plausible, but might squeak by; that Jack, living in a more urban area and wanting desperately to find happiness, would live into the early 1980s and never hear one is absurd.
Second, Proulx makes it abundantly clear which side of the line she is on with those viciously unsubtle Dickensian names -- Twist and (del) Mar.
That doesn't even get into the first names, which are chosen, I think, to keep the imagery of intercourse subconsciously on our minds. I've never known a man named "Ennis" outside this story, and the name is certainly meant to remind us of "anus;" given the context, it's hard not to hear the sexual overtones in even such a mundane name as "Jack." We've known for a long time that part of the social animus towards gay men derives from straight people's "ick factor" about what we actually do in bed; the choice of names with such sexual overtones is designed to reinforce that ick factor.
I have really mixed feelings here. I'm glad that audiences are responding so well to the movie, and responding (despite Proulx's seemingly clear intentions) with empathy for Jack and Ennis. And lord knows the movie is a beautifully crafted thing.
But I'm tired of stories about gay men who pay for their sexuality with their life; there's progressive or groundbreaking about that story. It's the same old tragic ending that straight folks have been writing for us since time began, and all the magnificent artifice in Hollywood can't make it any less condescending or insulting.
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