USA Today had a semi-lengthy report on the question of whether Brokeback Mountain is a big story for the moment, or if it marks a milestone.Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin expects Brokeback to prompt people to reconsider homosexual relationships in much the same way that The Defiant Ones, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner raised the consciousness on race relations in the late 1950s and '60s.
"The movie is in some uncharted waters, because it shows what it's like for two men to feel that kind of longing and passion for each other, and people aren't used to that," Maltin says. "No one movie is going to turn things around, but they can be building blocks. That could be this movie's legacy."
It will take some help from moviegoers. Charlize Theron, who won an Oscar for portraying a serial killer who was also a lesbian in 2003's Monster, says audience support for challenging fare, whether gay-themed or politically charged, is the key to a shift in Hollywood.
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And that, Judy Shepard says, might be all the movie needs to do. The death of her gay son, Matthew, in 1998 stirred a national debate over violence against gays. The murder is referenced vaguely in a scene in Brokeback.
Shortly before his death, her son gave her a copy of the story that inspired the film, Shepard says.
She doubts the movie will have an immediate effect on gay rights "because some people are ashamed to go see it. Even some of my friends — my friends — say it's just a gay cowboy movie and are afraid of something like that."
But when people can rent it privately, "I think they'll see it how I see it: as a story that's trying to say that you can't help who you fall in love with. If it opens just a few eyes to that, then it's done a good thing."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-02-21-brokeback_x.htm
