Brokeback Mountain

I went to see Brokeback Mountain on Tuesday night with a friend and have been pondering it ever since - as expected it is a very thought-provoking film. I was asked by someone whether it was explicit and realised that was a very difficult question to answer - in one sense no, in another yes very, so I'll leave it up to you to decide.

On a side note it is very long and, dare I say it, a bit slow going in places - and coming from me that is quite a statement as I will put up with a lot more ponderous films than many people as long as I feel the character development warrants it. It does warrant it in this film, but even still it was slow in places.

My over-riding impression of the story was the fear of the threat of violence that drive the two main characters, Jake and Innis, to keep their homosexual relationship a secret and prevents them from living together. I came out of the cinema thinking that regardless of what you consider the rights and wrongs of an actively-physical homosexual relationship, surely its better to live in a society where people are not placed in that position of having to deny what they feel is inescapable. Less people would have been hurt and the self-imposed isolation of Innis is heart-breaking... it is a very sad film.

I suppose I'm revealing my biases as a civil libertarian!

2 blog posts that I have read recently come to mind as I'm writing this - Carl making the point that Christians should shut up about homosexuality and Jonny Baker asking the question about this film "what could redemption look like for these people?"

I have such little first hand experience of talking to people who are homosexual that I don't feel I can comment with much integrity on the subject - my impression from the film was that one of the guys, Jack, experiences homosexual feelings and desires generally and did so before he met Innis, whereas Innis falls in love with Jake and is not generally attracted to men more than women. What is clear for both men is that they are genuinely in love with each other - sometimes tenderly, sometimes violently. I think the violence in their relationship disturbed me, but I was left with the concept that a lot of that violence was the manifestation of Innis' struggle to reconcile his feelings with his concept of himself.

I will reflect more on Jonny's question in another post soon otherwise this post will go on far too long!

I definitely recoomend you go and see it, if nothing else to make you think.