The Gay Cowboy Movie
‘Brokeback Mountain’ begins on the plains of Wyoming. It is either dusk or dawn: difficult to say. The shot is wide and the plains go on forever. The hazy sunlight sees to that. There is a truck, a rig, driving along a road and it is heading east, or, at the very least, toward the right side of the screen. This is symbolic of nothing. I just thought I’d let you know.
The truck stops, the passenger door opens and out comes a man in blue jeans, and a beige cowboy hat. He carries a jacket bunched up in his hand. He closes the passenger door, puts on his jacket, looks back toward the rig and turns into a pillar of salt. Just kidding. But the look is something mean and he sidles up to a trailer and waits in front of the door and smokes a cigarette and I swear to god that man’s a hunk.
Then the camera picks up a sorry looking black pickup truck. The engine sputters and coughs, its wheels wobble and you wonder if it’s going to reach its destination. But it does, and where it arrives is the same trailer where the hunky cowboy waits. The driver gets out: he’s wearing blue jeans and a cowboy hat too. He walks to the bed of the truck, makes eye contact with the hunk, puts his hand on the bed of the truck, juts out his hip and flashes him a devilish grin that says ‘I can and will see you naked.’ Who is this man? He is a member of the Village People. I’m kidding again. I’m sorry. I can’t stop. I’ll explain why in a moment.
What these two people are waiting for is a job, and the job they soon have is tending sheep on Brokeback Mountain. The foreman, played by Randy Quaid -- reasserting a set of acting chops I’d figured had disappeared somewhere around the second ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’ movie -- gives them this job: they will be shepherds on Brokback Mountain.
The first half hour of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is almost entirely devoid of dialogue. It is chock full of images and detail and the movie is patient enough to let those things show you the world in which the story takes place. The Hunk, Ennis Del Ray (Heath Ledger) and the Village Person, Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhal, sporting a nice if obvious name) guide the sheep up the mountain with dogs and horses at their disposal but are not averse to using their hands to get a stray sheep out of the river and back to the pack. There is also a sequence in which Jack tames his horse. We don’t see all the hard work that goes into the breaking of this wild creature; but in image after image, the horse gradually becomes rideable. These are two people who belong on that thar mountain.
Once they reach their destination, they spend their days looking out over the mountainside, chopping wood, cooking, protecting their gear from the elements, and, in Jack’s case, drinking whiskey and playing the harmonica badly. The two men spend their days and nights apart except for dinnertime when they gather by the fire to eat, talk some, drink whiskey and, on one particularly cold night, fornicate. The force of this encounter came as a surprise even though I knew it would happen. Jack makes the first pass. Ennis resists the advances but Jack persists, and Ennis finally relents. He turns Jack around, tears off his pants, spits in his hand, lowers it towards Jacks bum and it was at this moment I wanted walk to the projection booth and ask the guy inside to start the movie over. The fault, dear readers, lay not in the movie but in myself.
Let me explain: It took close to a month to get anyone to see ‘Brokeback Mountain’ with me. Most of my friends had already seen the film and the ones who hadn’t – mostly men – didn’t seem all that interested. When I asked why, answers ranged from ‘Because’ to (my favorite) ‘Because I can just imagine myself telling people I went to see Brokeback Mountain with this "very good friend" who lives upstairs from me who comes down to "visit" every night where we "talk" and sometimes we sit in my room and play "video games."’ One of the most direct answers not involving a joke was ‘It’s a love story. I don’t like love stories.’
And by the time I started asking around, the film had already passed into the popular vernacular. Even those who hadn’t seen the film knew what the phrase ‘Don’t go all Brokeback on me’ meant. Even before its release, it had earned the moniker ‘The Gay Cowboy Movie’. So I came to the movie thinking I already knew what it was going to be. I thought I was above it. This was, and is always, a profound error. Jack is not a member of the Village People; Ennis is not merely a Hunk. And their sex scene brought this into profound relief.
There was no sound for one thing. No swelling music. And at first it is not consensual. Ennis is surprised to the point I thought he would become violent. And when it happens, it happens so quickly that they don’t even look like they’re enjoying it. Ennis tears into the act as if he’s on the run and has to do it before he gets caught.. There aren’t soft kisses, warm caresses, witty banter or charming naiveté. It is violent, it is immediate, it is raw and it is earnest.
It’s this last quality, earnestness, which threw me for a loop. I had almost forgotten what an earnest movie looked liked. I had a hard time recognizing it so I spent the rest of the movie analyzing ‘Brokeback Mountain’ according to my knowing attitude. But I knew I was missing something. I wanted the movie to stop so I could adjust and put this movie into a better perspective. But it wasn’t stopping (what does?) and it took some effort to catch up to it. It was exhausting. I’m not at all sure how I did.
I couldn’t see what brought them to that first sex scene and I could never figure out what kept them together. (Their attraction and chemistry are neither palpable nor electric.) And I never felt the risk in their loving one another. Not from their spouses or a homophobic society. But it was the lack of these things that gave the film some of its power. In most films we witness a couple falling in love and then watch as that love is tested. We root for the couple because we know how they were together and root for them to be that way again. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ puts two men tohether in an impossible position from the getgo and explores the effect it has on them. It explores the ways in which this separation and longing to be together eats away at their identities and their relationships. It also explores pain and longing and regret and desire. Big themes. Heady stuff.
So my friend was right: it is a love story. But to steal from J.D. Salinger: It is a love story, pure and complicated.
‘Brokeback Mountain’ was just released on DVD. I’d like to give it another go.
