Sergio's Fall Movie Countdown--#3

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In a continuing series, Sergio reveals the ten films he is most looking forward to this fall.

3. Brokeback Mountain
directed by Ang Lee
opens 12/9

Brokeback Mountain is the story of two poor ranch hands who meet in Wyoming in the 60s and fall into a passionate affair. Neither on considers himself a homosexual, but both are unprepared for their relationship to come to an end. One dreams of buying a ranch together. The other thinks they'll be killed if anyone suspects their relationship. So they both marry and have children, but never stop longing in their hearts for each other. The movie covers twenty years of their lives as they try to come to terms with these unexpected emotions.

Normally, I would think a "gay cowboy" movie sounds kind of lame, but this movie absolutely has the best buzz of any film this fall. It killed at the Toronto Film Festival and won the top prize in Venice. It was adapted by Larry McMurtry from a short story by E. Annie Proulx. Both are Pulitzer Prize-winners, McMurtry for another western, Lonesome Dove, which happens to be my favorite book of all time. This guy knows cowboys. And I hear it pulls no punches with the depiction of homosexuality. These guys apparently really go at it, which will be something of a first for a Hollywood movie.

I've never been a huge Ang Lee fan. His films are almost always adored, but they are always a little too repressed for my tastes. Films like The Ice Storm and Sense and Sensibility are good, but I don't really want to revisit them. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, on the other hand, is a masterpiece. I'm as sick to death of all the martial art "flying movies" as anyone, but this one was spectacular and had amazing performances. Lee's last film was Hulk. It was, in no uncertain terms, a disaster. By all accounts he rebounds mightily here.

I've read the short story "Brokeback Mountain" and it is truly beautiful. It is spare and poignant and heartbreaking. Newsweek has said:

"...its raw masculinity, spare dialogue and lonely imagery subverted the myth of the American cowboy and obliterated gay stereotypes(...)

...(it) feels like a landmark film. No American film before has portrayed love between two men as something this pure and sacred. As such, it has the potential to change the national conversation and to challenge people's ideas about the value and validity of same-sex relationships."

I am very curious to see how McMurtry has fleshed it out Proulx's short story into a feature film. This guy can do westerns in his sleep, but the story isn't really a western. The guys work on a ranch, that's all. You could put this story in almost any repressive environment and have a similar result. Jeffrey Wells says "the film is about denial and shutting down your feelings, and how this finally leads to the shriveling of the soul." It's about the characters, not how they make a living.

Heath Ledger(!) is said to give a brilliant performance as the more repressed of the two and is a lock for a Best Actor nod. Expect this to be a Best Picture nominee and one of the best reviewed movies of the year. There is some concern in Hollywood about how a film like this will play in middle America. Those who've seen it say it is not really about homosexuality but love in general. There are already stories about people who have attended screenings and wept in the bathroom afterwards. I'm not sure I'll ever react to a movie quite so dramatically, but I will definitely check it out. Gay western. We'll never look at another John Wayne movie the same way again.

NEXT: My favorite movie star gets fat and gives one of the most acclaimed performances of the year.