One thing I've always wondered about Brokeback is, what makes it such a powerful romance? Why do I find it roughly a million times more romantic than any other movie love story I can remember seeing? I mean, sure, we're all obsessed. Still, it seems odd that out of all of cinematic history I am unable to think of even one film couple that I cared about half as much as I do Jack and Ennis. So what makes their relationship so moving?
A few possible reasons come to mind. Probably no single one fully explains it, but maybe a bunch of them put together do. So I thought I'd see what you guys have to add.
So I'll start:
I was discussing Brokeback with a friend, who liked it but only in a mildly appreciative way. One of her criticisms was that she wished you could see more sparks between them prior to TS1. Of course, as all of us here know, you can. The subtlety of those sparks caused my friend to overlook them -- I barely picked up on them myself the first time I saw it -- but it's the subtlety that makes them so touching.
I started thinking about how in most movies, the sparks are generated by some wildly improbable experience the couple goes through. She is being chased by gangsters, and he has to help her hide. Or they each think the apartment they live in is theirs, but that's because one of them is actually a ghost. Even more everday scenarios are still pretty out there: they go on a date together and everything goes absurdly wrong, or they hate each other until one of them goes through a bad experience and the other one is sympathetic ... or whatever.
But we watch Jack and Ennis fall in love exactly the way people in real life fall in love. There's the initial physical attraction. The friendship develops. They admire qualities in each other. They sneak glances when the other isn't looking. They find opportunities to touch. They do nice things for each other. They flirt. They start to genuinely care about each other.
Nothing absurd or unusual. Plus, they do all this while also trying NOT to show that it's happening. The realism and subtlety draw us in. We remember what those feelings are like, and can feel ourselves falling in love, too.
What else?