'Brokeback' World

DATE January 6, 2006 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Filler: By policy of WHYY, this information is restricted and has
been omitted from this transcript

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Analysis: How "Brokeback Mountain" affects movie audiences
DAVE DAVIES, host:

Ang Lee's film "Brokeback Mountain" has garnered strong reactions, ranging
from wide praise to condemnation. Beginning in the '60s and spanning 20
years, it's a love story between two cowhands in Wyoming. Our critic at large
John Powers looks at the responses to the film, including his own, and says
that ultimately the film touches on something that's missing from most
Hollywood films.

JOHN POWERS reporting:

Ever since "Brokeback Mountain" won the Venice Film Festival last September,
this `gay cowboy movie,' as it's lazily described, has become a cultural
landmark, and not unreasonably. This is the first time Hollywood's made a gay
love story of the old-fashioned kind, with attractive stars, swooning kisses
and a wrenching farewell.

While most gay viewers respond warmly to "Brokeback Mountain," it has
produced some unexpected reactions among those who aren't gay. Some straight
critics have complained that there's not enough steamy sex, a charge they
didn't level at "Titanic." The critics at several Christian media outlets
have, to their great credit, reviewed Ang Lee's film as a film, not as a
cultural war manifesto, praising it for its artistry and emotional power even
as they took issue with the characters' homosexuality.

At the same time, the movie's also provoked a response I've never seen before,
one that suggests our culture's continuing discomfort with gayness. The media
have been filled with pieces, including an op-ed by comedian Larry David,
either saying `I don't want to see "Brokeback Mountain"' or asking whether the
refusal to go means you're homophobic. I don't know about you, but I can't
remember an op-ed piece about not wanting to see any other movie or anyone
asking if skipping "Memoirs of a Geisha" means you're secretly a racist.

Still, all these abstract arguments overlook the most striking thing about
seeing "Brokeback Mountain." It makes a lot of people cry. I've never been
to a press screening that left more people in tears, myself included. And you
can't go to this movie anywhere without hearing sniffling in the audience.
For this is essentially the poignant story of how one of the cowboys, Ennis
Del Mar, who's played by Heath Ledger, is so overwhelmed by fear and his own
impacted emotions that he wrecks his own life and the lives of both his lover
Jack Twist and his wife Alma. Here as Ennis talks to Jack, played by Jake
Gyllenhaal, you can see this wreckage in action.

(Soundbite of "Brokeback Mountain")

Mr. JAKE GYLLENHAAL: (As Jack Twist) What if you and me had a little ranch
somewhere, a little cow-and-calf operation? It'd be a sweet life. I mean,
hell, Lureen's an old man, you better give me a down payment to get lost, and
then he more or less already said it.

Mr. LEDGER: (As Ennis Del Mar) No, I told you it ain't gonna be that way.
Hell, you got your wife and baby in Texas and, you know, I got my life in
Riverton.

Mr. GYLLENHAAL: (As Jack Twist) Yeah, so you and Alma--that's a lie.

Mr. LEDGER: (As Ennis Del Mar) Oh, you shut up about Alma. This ain't her
fault. The bottom line is we're around each other and this thing grabs hold
of us again in the wrong place and the wrong time and we're dead.

POWERS: A story of love and loss, "Brokeback Mountain" is a real weepy, a
kind of movie that used to be hugely popular, but in recent years has been
viewed with enormous suspicion, even contempt, by a film culture that dislikes
`downer' emotions, especially those thought to be girlie. We may go to the
movies to laugh at a cat flushing a toilet or to be stocked by the spectacle
of a huge ape on the Empire State Building, but people are embarrassed to go
to a movie in order to cry. It's not hard to understand why. Unlike
laughter, crying opens us up. It makes us vulnerable--vulnerable to the
derision of those who aren't crying, and vulnerable to vast, oceanic feelings
that can all too easily be exploited.

But "Brokeback Mountain" isn't a phone company ad or one of those shameless
movies like "The Family Stone" that seek to milk our emotions by giving Mom
cancer. It's a tearjerker that doesn't actually jerk our tears. Instead,
like last year's dark-horse Oscar-winner "Million Dollar Baby," it takes the
stuff of a potboiler and treats it with great restraint. The brilliance of
Ledger's performance is they suggest so much painfully burning emotion beneath
his frozen surface that much of the audience does the weeping that he cannot.
They weep for him, for those close to him and, one suspects, for the many
forms of sadness in their own lives.

I find something deeply satisfying in such tears, a feeling of collective
abandonment that was once a big part of of going to the movies. And I'm not
the only one. The desire for that feeling clearly remains. That's why even
though Hollywood makes very few weepies these days, the accomplished ones it
does produce, from "Titanic" to "Million Dollar Baby" to "Brokeback Mountain,"
take on a far greater resonance than anyone ever anticipates. In a world
that's forever telling us that we ought to be cool, these movies tell us it's
OK to feel something. They make it OK to cry.

DAVIES: John Powers is film critic for Vogue.

(Credits)

DAVIES: For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.

We'll end today's show with a track from the singer Lou Rawls. He died this
morning of cancer. He was 72.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. LOU RAWLS (Singer-Songwriter): (Singing) They call it stormy Monday, but
Tuesday's just as bad. They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad.
Wednesday's worse, Thursday's all so sad. Yes, the eagle flies on Friday.
Saturday I go out to play. Yes, the eagle flies on Friday. Saturday I go out
to play. And then on Sunday I go to church, and I kneel down and pray.

Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy on me. Oh, Lord, have mercy. Lord, have
mercy on me. Lord, have mercy, my heart's in misery.

You know, I'm crazy about my baby. Won't you send my baby back to me?
Ooh-ee, crazy about my baby. Won't you send my baby back to me? Oh, have
mercy. Send her home to me.
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