Brokeback Mountain should have won.
Important to be on the record, I suppose, for Oscar historians may well one day regard Crash’s best picture win over heavy favourite Brokeback Mountain as one of the biggest upsets and/or foolish decisions ever made by Academy voters. (And there have been dozens of foolish decisions.)
I picked Brokeback Mountain, new to DVD this week, as the film I believed should and would win the best-picture Oscar during our preview series last month, but the voters who matter saw if differently.
The conventional wisdom was that Crash was closing in on Brokeback in the last days of Oscar voting, but best-picture presenter Jack Nicholson appeared to register genuine surprise when he opened the envelope – mirroring the shock (and disgust in some corners) of media pundits and fans alike. Theories were circulating furiously in the days after likable Paul Haggis, whose Crash is a considerable achievement despite what its detractors say, stepped to the podium to collect his golden statuette. The theories posited the following:
• That there is more homophobia in liberal Hollywood than liberal Hollywood would like us to believe.
• That there was simply a Brokeback backlash.
• That the Academy wanted to set its self apart from most of the other critics and awards bodies that had (rightly) honoured Brokeback.
• That Crash is the kind of “important movie’’ – with its well-intentioned examination of social issues – that Academy voters like to honour.
Given a vote – and that ain’t gonna happen – I would have selected Crash for best picture after Brokeback, Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck.
Brilliantly crafted and acted, emotionally wrenching and, ultimately, terribly sad, Brokeback Mountain is unforgettable, a film that stays with you long after the theatre and the drive home.
A colleague, who was not so keen on seeing the movie, told me she wasn’t sure if she liked it or not, but admitted that days later she was still thinking about it. I think she liked it – and was moved by it.
I know of no one – even those uncomfortable with the subject matter – who did not feel that Brokeback was a fine movie.
Branded of course, as the “gay cowboy movie,’’ Brokeback Mountain is more a film about forbidden love. It is about those who, for reasons of time or circumstance or culture, can’t be who they are. Ang Lee, an Oscar winner for his beautifully undersated direction, calls it a great American love story – it is simply a universal love story.
In 1963 in Wyoming – actually Alberta, as we all know and, boy, is the scenery spectacular – two cowboys couldn’t be lovers and remain cowboys or possibly even remain alive.
Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) meet when they take a job herding sheep up on Brokeback Mountain. After weeks together with no people around for miles, sitting around a fire sipping whisky at the end of long days, the relationship becomes sexual, creating intense confusion for both men.
“You know I ain’t queer,’’ Ennis says, and he means it.
“Me, neither,’’ responds an equally emphatic Jack.
But neither man can live without the relationship – “I wish I knew how to quit you’’ is the line most often quoted – and we follow their passion and their anguish over the years as they split, marry and start families, and return again and again to Brokeback Mountain.
Based on a 1997 Annie Proulx short story that first appeared in The New Yorker, Brokeback Mountain was adapted for the screen by famed author Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) and Diana Ossana, who both earned Oscars for their work.
From Lee’s languid pace – too leisurely for some tastes – to the spare dialogue of McMurtry and Ossana, Brokeback Mountain seems to get the cowboy way. It also lets us stroll down small western towns that reminded me – if you shifted to black and white – of deserted main streets depicted in director Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 classic The Last Picture Show.
Every detail, including the poignant strains of the soundtrack and the gorgeous big sky cinematography, speaks to the detail and care taken in crafting this film.
The performances are uniformly excellent, but Ledger’s terse and torn Ennis is the emotional broken heart of the film.
The Oscar may have gone to Crash, but it is Brokeback Mountain that will linger for years – a much greater award.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – original rating: 5 SUNS (out of 5): DVD rating: 5 SUNS
