Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
The true reason
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: goadra on August 09, 2006, 10:27:14 pm ---Ah, but there’s the irony--they wouldn’t think that obsession as weird as Brokeaholism. One critic said about Titanic, “50,000,000 teenage girls can’t be wrong.”
I remember another critic saying about BBM that “this movie is aimed at women between <nn> and <nn> who like to watch two hunky young actors smooch and talk about their feelings.”
--- End quote ---
Critics and others might not think a Titanic obsession as 'weird' but there was a denigrating attitude about it from the point it began to be a hit movie. And it was for the reason you implied: the popularity with women, in the case of Titanic very young women, invalidated it in many peoples' minds. And in the case of Brokeback you have two groups who were especially affected who are both, say, less than respected in terms of art and entertainment: women and gay men.
Interestingly, Titanic comes up as a comparison quite often on Brokeback discussion boards and people often make denigrating comparisons to the love story in the former being shallow. I hadn't found that to be the case. I've re-watched some of my favorite movies since seeing BBM and found I appreciate the love stories more.
The closest I've come to finding people in RL who are as affected by this movie as I've been was when I took a night off to see a screening at Central Missouri State University that was was followed by a talk and Q&A session with Diana Ossana. (Worth using a vacation day!) It was about 300 people, 250 or so of them university students but also people from smaller towns who said it either wasn't shown or had such a short run they'd missed it. Some of them drove a long way just to see this one movie.
ednbarby:
--- Quote from: goadra on August 13, 2006, 10:59:27 am ---What I see in TS3 is this: Whatever else happened around them, no matter what anyone called it, whether/how “I love you” was or wasn’t said, the simple fact is that they loved each other. I’d trade my 20 years for just one of their fishing trips.
--- End quote ---
And you just read my mind. Spooky, indeed. ;)
silkncense:
--- Quote ---Moments of perfect happiness and passionate love with the one person they were destined to be with in all the world. What speaks to me especially is the very fact that what they had was so deeply real and true and pure
--- End quote ---
Exactly. I recall reading others who felt nothing but despair over the story of Brokeback. I felt that, but I also felt and saw as Mikaela so perfectly expressed.
I don't want this to sound trivial - but the scene in the diner of "When Harry Met Sally" where the woman says, "I'll have what she had"? Maybe the "emotional erotica" is what carries us - not the sharing of emotions/thoughts etc between Ennis & Jack, but that emotional joy they each held, albeit mostly hidden. Isn't that why the dozy embrace & Reunion scene draws us back again & again?
jpwagoneer1964:
--- Quote from: Mikaela on August 13, 2006, 05:46:03 am ---I first posted this in a discussion thread about what Ennis knew and when and why he acted as he did, but realized it fits better in here.
I think I may have reached some sort of "inner peace" about what Ennis (and Jack) consciously or subconsciously knew and thought and felt and why they did or didn't do, or say, or feel, or be...... Perhaps it's just the eye of the Brokeback hurricane I'm experiencing at the moment. About time too, after much more than half a year of this.
I've always believed they both know and acknowledge to themselves they love the other, early on in their story, - Ennis too, even if he didn't use the word. In the midst of all their struggles they both knew what they had. I still firmly believe that. I've been wearing my necklace with 2 silver cowboy hat charms quite a lot lately and the reason I like it so much is because it to me *is* a beautiful symbol of deep and abiding and acknowledged love.
All the tragedy and missed opportunities and twarthed hopes and dreams in the film serves to put the love story in high relief, make it stand out all the clearer and more beautiful. Ennis and Jack had their love for each other tested and tried like few others, and they both had to make significant personal sacrifices, and still the love held. And even if they did not have much time together, and the entirely happy times were few, - they *did* have them.
--- End quote ---
Very well said. They did have at least a years worth of days together plus Brokeback in 1963. Ennis realizing what he had with Jack, knowing he did his best to protect it I sure helped sustain him after Jack death. He lived something we all want.
ednbarby:
--- Quote from: silkncense on August 13, 2006, 01:25:43 pm ---Maybe the "emotional erotica" is what carries us - not the sharing of emotions/thoughts etc between Ennis & Jack, but that emotional joy they each held, albeit mostly hidden. Isn't that why the dozy embrace & Reunion scene draws us back again & again?
--- End quote ---
By George, I think she's got it. Now that you put it that way, I reckon Ms. Daum was right. But I do think she missed the target but hit the tree. It wasn't about getting to see men be emotional - it was about experiencing an all-encompassing love - as JP said, what we all want - vicariously through them.
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