You know, it's so wonderful that those amazing people won. I was thrilled to see Santaolalla, in particular, get the recognition he deserves. But the Academy didn't "shine" on Brokeback, it tireironed it with a Best Picture snub.
It's very interesting. I'm not in tears, but I am angry. Mostly, though, I'm puzzled by WHY this happened. Unfortunately, the only answer I can reach is that it simply isn't okay to be gay. The Academy simply would not allow a film about men who love each other to take its place in the pantheon. The film no one would touch for six years is still the one they won't touch.
In a year when every nominated film was great, when every one of them: "Brokeback Mountain", "Capote", "Crash", "Good Night and Good Luck", "Munich", deserved the Oscar, it's simply too easy to brush it off as chance, as 'one great film among many' and 'they all stood a chance of winning or losing."
I've given it a lot of thought over the past week, since the "Crash" buzz began, and I keep coming back to the same sad, but ultimately calming thought - this had to happen. The story, as Annie Proulx has said, had one outcome, from the beginning. It was a story about the power of homophobia, and Jack, because of his openness, had a particular destiny that he was headed toward. His twenty years of happiness with Ennis had to end, but Ennis lives on, and his story lives on. That Ennis and Jack found love makes the story eternal; that their love was denied makes the story meaningful. Jack, unfortunately, got a tireiron to the face for being who he was.
Despite winning virtually every other best film award, Brokeback Mountain, the movie, was tireironed tonight, in full view of everyone, for being what it was, for speaking its truth. It had to be. The Academy members simply could not reward a film that made them so very uncomfortable, a film they could not tell others to see, a film that could make them a target.
The Oscar snub stands as a notable aberration in a season of praise and recognition, the only major award for the film not given to it. And yet Jack's story doesn't die, because Ennis lived it too. Brokeback doesn't die because the story and the other awards and the viewers carry it on. More importantly, the culture carries it now. Which leaves it in some good company, among the non-winners that people remember and return
The question remains - why didn't they give Best Picture to Brokeback?
Their reasoning I cannot know but can assume, based on my own experiences with people who do not know what to do with me and my life, who react with silence, with backs turned, or worse, with pitying glances, all the more politically correct forms of hate speech.
