I watched a movie last night, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. All of you had heard of the controversy surrounding the film concerning the strong push for acceptance of homosexual relationships in the society. I do have to say that Ang Lee is good at directing a film, but there's more to say. Though I must warn you that there are some heavy movie spoilers in my review.
The thing is, this movie started out as an 8-page short story that appeared in a magazine a few years ago. Then it was adapted into a thick screenplay, an 8-page story into a 2 hours and 15 minutes long movie. It's an incredibly difficult task to pull off in most cases. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!’ and ‘The Cat in the Hat’ suffered greatly as full-length movies. The short books were highly entertaining for the children, but the adapted movies weren’t.
Brokeback Mountain got sort of lucky here, but the story does drag on a lot. Not a lot happen between important moments of the movie. Exceptional performances stand out in this movie. Great cast, everybody deserved the nominations they received. The movie could had been better paced if at around 15 to 30 minutes were cut out of it, maybe more. Jack Twist's death at the end of the movie was pretty short and under detailed. You didn't have any time to feel anything for his death because you suddenly learn of it and it isn't done with a lot of emotions. Though the love relationship between the two actors seemed very real with some emotional struggles because of Ennis’ fear of the homophobic society due to an unforgettable moment in his childhood when he saw a dead body of a gay man in a ditch with his genital pulled off. He feared that it would happen to one or both of them. Though Jack Twist fell victim to a hate crime in the end, as Ennis always had feared.
The movie was overall decent, maybe a 6 to 7 out of a 10. The quality of the movie suffered greatly due to the over hyped marketing and politically fuelled debates among the politicians, religious activists and more. The beef I have with the Oscars is that they don’t pick the best movies to nominate, they rarely do.
To the Oscar voters, don’t pick movies solely based on your political beliefs. Base it on the quality of the stories, performances and the technical aspects.
Brokeback Mountain was decent, so was Crash. But were these two some of the best movies of the year?
Not really.
I enjoyed the heck out of ‘A History of Violence’ by the Canuck director, David Cronenberg more than these two nominated movies combined. David Cronenberg is a highly entertaining and skilled filmmaker; he deserves more recognition. One of the most underrated storytellers ever.
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