I watched Brokeback Mountain last night. While I applaud the decision to make the movie and to cast two young Hollywood Stars in it, the movie, taken out of the context of America’s culture war, didn’t do too much for me. As with Ang Lee’s previous movies, The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and The Hulk, Brokeback Mountain was good, but not good enough.
The movie shows twenty years in the lives of its characters, but at no point did I feel like twenty years had gone by. Perhaps it was because Heath Ledger’s makeup rarely changed, but I lean toward the fact that Lee failed on two points: he didn’t show enough of their relationship, and he didn’t show enough of not their relationship. We got just a little taste of both, but not enough to nourish.
At the end of the movie, I didn’t really care about either of the characters, and I had no vested interest in seeing them happy or sympathizing with their tragedy.
For a better rendition of what Lee could have achieved, watch what Emerson College’s Chocolate Cake City put together:
