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Brokeback Mountain mini review


Back again. I've been overdoing it with this script I'm writing and haven't found the time to write on the blog. A drag, I know.

Had a chance to watch "Brokeback Mountain" the other night and it was a wonderful movie. Heath Ledger is a revelation in his role. The rest of the cast is also outstanding, but is really Ledger that shows something I have never seen in any of his previous performances. I think this is my second favorite Ang Lee film, behind "Sense and Sensibility".

As I watched the movie, I was unprepared to get sucked into it emotionally like I did. I had read the short story last year and that really stuck with me. But this film has really kept me thinking since I watched the credits.

What I really came away from it thinking, though, is how I wish I could have been the first person to read the story, or to be the first person, unaware, to see the movie. What a marvelous experience that must have been for those unsuspecting people. With so much press given to the basic plot of the movie (and that's what they focus on... the BASIC plot, not the emotional depth or the fine craftsmanship... it's called that "gay cowboy movie") it is close to impossible to not know what the movie is about when you sit down to watch it.

Over the holiday, I caught some of Ernst Lubitsch's "Heaven Can Wait". Thinking it had something to do with the Warren Beatty remake, I started watching it and soon I was putting off my chores and glued to the television. It will be interesting to hear/see what people fifty or so years from now think of "Brokeback Mountain." If that future generation is anything like the current one, those people will have forgotten about it. Will they think it quaint. Antiquated (like some people think of Demme's "Philadelphia" now a days)? I had no idea what "Heaven Can Wait" was about, but a good movie is a good movie.

Hopefully, some Sunday afternoon in the future, some 30 something year old film guy will flip on a classic movie channel and that guy will get drawn into the beautiful film experience that is "Brokeback Mountain."

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