First film outing of 2006..

[green_amber]

.. is indeed to "the gay cowboys" film - Brokeback Mountain. Which did indeed, make me cry, lots.

It's a very very good film, but not, as we were discussing coming up the road, because it's a "gay" film. It's because it's a relationship film that gives itself room to breathe. It isn't about two people who fall in love while trying to save the world because we need a a romance sub plot, or even a slightly better explored romance evolved over a few rounds of intellectual suppers and bon mots among the literati. That's the kind of falling in love we're used to seeing in Anglo films. It's more like what I remember of the French Eric Rohmer type films films I went to when I was a student. Slow burning love, quiet love, long lasting sad love, inarticulate love, we don't see much of this on film. It works, it convinces, and it's very sad. Show not tell, they said in my scriptwriting class. The script is very good at doing this. The actors are superb and Heath Ledger is wonderful especially.

I kept getting weird flashback echoes of, "can this really be the 60s, not the 1880s? Yes that IS the Vietnam war they're, once or twice, referring to. Yes look she is wearing hot pants. Yes premarital het sex is ok, it seems, so no, we're not in the 50s, really. Yes that is a Lady Di hairdo, it must be the 80s." Yet in the countryside of rural Texas and Wyoming, the lynch mob mentality remains. Was this true? Is anyone out there from Texas who knows? I told V and Va how in 1988 - not so far from the 83 of the film's "climax" - I had indeed stayed in just that kind of trailer housing outside Dallas - it was hot hot hot, no air conditioning, and listless prostitutes surrounding the housing enclave. It was a very strange few days - catabolism was there - and I honestly couldn't say what the sexual mores were, but the environment rings true.

I didn't even remember it was Ang Lee directing till the credits rolled either. How does a Chinese director get this authentic feel for the 70s in the USA? Here and in The Ice Storm he really nails that all encompassing muddy brownness in house decor and lifestyle. Yet Brokeback Mountain itself, now I think of it, has almost the look of the Chinese fantasy/samurai films we see here, that beauty of crystalline nature. What was this man doing making The Hulk?

I still need a film icon :(

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

How does a Chinese director get this authentic feel for the 70s in the USA?

I had real feeling of "how the hell?" when I read Nick Cave's take on 50-ish years ago Appalachia in And The Ass Saw the Angel.

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

How does a Chinese director get this authentic feel for the 70s in the USA?

I had real feeling of "how the hell?" when I read Nick Cave's take on 50-ish years ago Appalachia in And The Ass Saw the Angel.

(Sorry, that one above was me.)

[ophelia-complex.livejournal.com]

wonderful review. I would go and see the film based on that review alone.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

like we were saying coming up the road, you don't need to go far spacially or temporally to find that certain kinds of love gets its head kicked in for even whispering its name. Try any small scottish town, hey try walking down lothian road or peckham high street holding hands with another man (in fact try this anywhere outside a square mile round old compton street...). We street smart liberal, metropolitan, intelligensia tend to forget that (like with wealth) we inhabit a very extreme percentile of the tolerance graph.

Dont you remember the guy in texas who got stoned to death, the kids in iran hanged for kissing, the guy killed on clapham common a few months back?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was going to say something like that, in response to this: Yet in the countryside of rural Texas and Wyoming, the lynch mob mentality remains. Was this true? Is anyone out there from Texas who knows?

You don't have to be from Texas to know it: shows up in the news every now and again.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Ang Lee can achieve this level of authenticity precisely because he wasn't part of that cultural timestream, and can therefore divorce the actual events from any false memories he might otherwise have as a participant.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Call me a philistine if you must, but my idea of Hell is being trapped in a room with incessant Eric Rohmer films. Enough angst, already. Enough midlife crisis. Enough bourgeois beating about the bush. Enough subtle flirting. GO AND STAIN THE DUVET.