Brokeback Mountain

Two cowboys. A mountain. A forbidden love. Pudding. But first, some previews:

ON A CLEAR DAY–No, this isn’t a remake of a stupid Barbra “I Can’t Spell My Own Name” Streisand movie. This is the story of a man (Peter Mullan from Session 9 and Braveheart) who swam across the English Cannel. It looks like a fairly typical “inspirational” drama where one man’s passion becomes an entire town’s salvation, but it looks like a very good example of one of those movies. And with two (count ‘em, TWO) Braveheart guys AND Billy “Pippin”� Boyd, I’m sure there’s a built in audience for this somewhere. I’ll see it at least on DVD.

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING–This looks like it’s going to be awesome. Aaron Eckhart plays a spin doctor for the tobacco industry. He brings his son (Cameron Bright) along for the ride while he tries to fix his Dark Lord’s image. He’s almost proud of the number of people that the industry kills. He’s an evil man, but he’s so charming that it’s hard even for the kid who got cancer from smoking to hate him.

And I believe this is the movie that Sundance audiences were cheated out of full frontal shots of Katie Holmes. Don’t worry, though. They’ll be in the cut that we get to see. Apparently Tom “What The Fuck Is Coming Out Of My Mouth?!” Cruise doesn’t have as much pull as we all thought for a little while. It was a mistake on the part of the projectionist. Oops!

FREEDOMLAND–Didn’t I already see this movie? Yeah. I’m sure I did. It was called The Forgotten when I saw it and it had Gary Sinise instead of Samuel L. Jackson, but it still wasn’t very good. This time out, though, Julianne Moore doesn’t just have Sam looking for her son (who was kidnapped by very real people this time, but there’s still some kind of conspiracy going on), she has Edie Falco being all psychic, too.

We’ll see if this is any different (or better) than The Forgotten, but probably not until DVD. (One thing it has going for it is a really creepy namesake: an old abandoned orphanage. At one point a character says, “When they closed down Freedomland, it was like they were closing down Hell.” I like that.)

THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA–A revisionist western trailer to put before a revisionist western. How appropriate.

This is about a man who goes to get his murdered buddy’s body back to Mexico so he can be buried among his family”¦or something like that. Tommy Lee Jones (star AND director) is the faithful friend and Barry Pepper is the murderer/border patrol agent. Tommy drags Barry along for the ride.

It seems like at one point I had heard that this movie was kind of a dark comedy with a very deep point about border relations/racism. The preview, of course, made it seem like a pretty harsh drama. I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m definitely interested.

I think some people have said that this was Jones’ directorial debut. That’s wrong. His first was a TV movie called The Good Old Boys back in 1995. I’ve heard that it was pretty good, but I’ve never seen it. Don’t ask me nothin’ ’bout it.

IMAGINE YOU AND ME–Some British movie about a guy who is in love with his lesbian best friend and she’s all conflicted because she’s really in love with his girlfriend. Kind of a kinder, gentler Chasing Amy with a Turtles title.

It could be fun to hear Piper Perabo screw up an English accent. And Anthony Head is in it, so Buffy folks will be in line already. I don’t know that I’m too interested, though.

Ok. Done with that. Let’s get to the gay cowboys. And I’ll try to refrain from making too many South Park references.

Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) is a mush-mouthed, stoic cowboy who is trying desperately to make ends meet while he waits for his impending marriage to Alma (Michelle Williams) to come up. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a rodeo cowboy who needs some extra cash, too. When the two meet up for a job herding sheep for Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid in his least sympathetic role that I can remember), sparks fly that they don’t know what to do with. Fortunately, Brokeback Mountain does know what to do with them. It pushes them together in a night of pent up passion that will last for decades while their lives seemingly go on. Even their marriages (Jack marries Lureen (Anne Hathaway) a rodeo cowgirl in Texas) and new families can’t truly keep them apart. They meet every few months after reuniting after four years to keep their secret love going.

But the 60s are a cruel time for cowboys to be gay and, of course, their love has to be hidden away from everyone. Even their secret trysts on Brokeback Mountain may not be as secret as they probably should be.

Every bit of praise that has been heaped on this movie is well-deserved. It’s not only a sad story, but a sad commentary on today’s society that forces people to hide their love away like some kind of dirty secret. (How did we “progress” from a completely permissive society in Greece and Rome thousands of years ago to such a puritanical society that sometimes won’t even let two straight people be together in peace just because they are different colors? But that’s a rant for a different time.)

All of the performances in the film are great, but I think it’s probably the two real-life lovers who deserve the most praise. Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams are amazing in ways that a lot of people never thought possible of the Knight’s Tale and “Dawson’s Creek” alums.

Watch for Anna Faris, Kate Mara (the beautiful young co-star of Tadpole) and Linda Cardellini (my favorite freak/geek girl) in small, but pivotal roles.

Ang Lee has created a film from Annie Proulx’s short story and Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana’s screenplay that transcends gay and straight. It’s a love story as deep and moving as any straight love story and should be seen by anyone who thinks that people choose to be gay or straight. These two men, although fictional, show the struggle of any homosexual person who is trying to do right by themselves, but still stay inside of a “normal” society of the 60s or today.

And, for all of those folks out there who say, “Leave the Marlboro Man alone!”, remember this: this kind of thing happened a lot more frequently than we would like to admit in the days of the cowboys. It wasn’t always about love when it happened, but it did happen. It’s lonely in them thar mountains!

But (cough, cough) the best scene was still the one with Anne Hathaway’s breasts. (cough, manly grunt.)

Go see the movie, folks. It’s really, really good.