Upward over the mountain

Having nothing else to do yesterday morning before football started, I decided over coffee to see Brokeback Mountain. I sat among vast fields of empty seats at Stonestown, with perhaps thirty other people in a room that might have held at least 300. It was the early matinee, and the weather was just letting up after the biggest soaking of 2005. I hear the film is still wildly popular in San Francisco, but this wasn't evidence of that. I prefer to see films when the theater is mostly empty anyway -- it's easier to hear everything, and you can stretch out a little.

The film is very good, probably as good as Hollywood productions get these days -- although I see so few Hollywood productions that I'm really not qualified to say that. I do prefer small, well-scripted stories with few special effects, which is why I find myself enjoying independent cinema more. What indie cinema might lack in scope, it typically makes up for by hitting closer to home.

Brokeback is more ambitious, I suppose, but it isn't a "big" story. There are tons of wide-angle shots of mountains covered in trees and sheep, but there are only a handful of characters that get more than, say, three minutes of screen time. Most of the story is about internally conflicted people who only let their conflicts rise to the surface in violent outbursts or in secrecy. It is a story of denial and repression. And it is a story of people choosing against what they really want out of life, out of fear, and having to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

I have seen people say that the main characters, both strikingly portrayed, make immoral choices. They do cause a fair amount of heartbreak -- mostly in the character played very strongly by Michelle Williams, but they don't ruin anyone else's life any more than they hurt themselves. (I also thought the lovely Linda Cardellini made the most of her screen time.) It's not a "pro-family" film in the way some people would like it to be. But it is most certainly about people following, and failing to follow, the truth about themselves. And what is that besides moral behavior?

(I'm going to dismiss the idea that Brokeback Mountain somehow exhibits "a pro-Marxist or pro-Communist subtext... with some strong anti-capitalist sentiments," by the way. And, for the record, I'm not really concerned about the "upper male nudity" that has Ted Baehr's undies in a knot.)

Ang Lee and the screenwriters, including Larry McMurtry, add a fair amount to the story, although upon closer review with the original Proulx I see that they have mostly added dramatized scenes that are merely described in the narrative. The Cardellini character, and most or all of the dialogue with the Del Mar daughters, are brand-new.

I wonder if I'm being overly sensitive here by saying that Brokeback Mountain is nearly ruined by its score. Acoustic guitar and pedal steel would seem to be appropriate, but somehow the backing music turned a few scenes to mush. (Hey, a terrible soundtrack nearly turned Hotel Rwanda, a film about genocide, into sap too.) On the other hand, the popular songs in the film are very smartly chosen. And I had to smile when I saw that the closing credits are accompanied by songs from Willie Nelson and Rufus Wainwright.