... this is the first time I've stumbled onto this thread. I'm finding the insights of women that have seen BBM fasinating. Keep them coming! For all of you women that have gotten your husbands/bf's ... etc. to attend .... how about urging them to post? Perhaps we could get a new thread started for straight men who have seen the movie and their reactions. That could be pretty interesting!
I have convinced my husband (a very straight middle-class white male) to write a review of BBM for me and he said I could share with others if I want. I am not sure where to post the review but since it's suggested in this thread that we should get straight guys' reactions I thought it's fitting to post it here. About the last part of the review, I think I was the one who ruined it for him so I apologize. Since 2nd viewing was so much better for me I am working on convincing him to go back for the 2nd time.
I agreed to write a review of Brokeback Mountain after I viewed it, in part to humor my wife and in part, for no other reason than to see if I could. I am going to simply go through my list of notes, both good and bad, with no regard to order.
I am, in some ways, a typical middle-aged, middle class white male, both a product and victim of my social and economic upbringing. When I first viewed the movie, it struck me as so many films leave me; upset and angry that two people who were so enthralled to the happiness and joy they discovered, but were too weak to grasp it. I was angry because I have always operated on the assumption that if you want something badly enough, work hard enough,…well, then there is nothing you can’t do. I am wrong, of course, because I am living now, not 1963 when the story starts. Times and thoughts were different, and Joe Public had a more restrictive view of the world and how things should be. So it grieves me to say it, but Ennis was most likely right in saying their relationship could cost them their lives. So I have no valid footing to sit in judgment of them.
But I do.
Was it just me, or did they always drink long necks of beer, but there was never a label showing?
Heathe Ledger’s character was just what you would expect from a man trapped by circumstances and responsibilities. Rough, hard working and sparse of words, with a strong streak of loyalty running through him. But he also showed a willingness to punish himself for the passion he felt for Jack Twist because, as was the norm in those days, he felt it was wrong. This is in comparison to Jack Twist who seemed to “take what he could get”, which, as crude as that sounds, shows a more encompassing acceptance of who he was.
One of the more horrific elements, to my mind, was the inescapable, grinding poverty, of both economical and, again, the myopic mind-set of the day. As a member of a minority, I find one just as bad as the other. The detail orientated sets factored into the projection of the desperateness of the Ennis’s financial woes, just as they helped paint a happier picture for Jack.
Nitpicky items: what was the deal with the eyeliner? Looked a like a eighth-grade girlie put it on. And as from the first close up of Ennis lighting a smoke, I knew we weren’t dealing with real cowboys. Their hands were too smooth and small.
If I could change one thing about this movie, I would shorten and make the first bout of sex less graphic and more suggestive. Now, before I get shouted at, listen to my reason; anticipation gets in the way. The only person who hasn’t heard/read/saw something about the scene is a sheep farmer in Wyoming. Therefore a 15 seconds segment of the story gets in the way of this being a terrific story. Remember The Crying Game? Great movie, but BBM suffers from the same, if not to a greater degree, of the public yakking so much about the “surprise scene” that you spend half the movie on the edge of your seat, and when it comes, it can’t live up to what you had built it up to in your mind. My wife is a good example of this phenomena made large. She spent so much time reading reviews, listening to interviews and watching clips that the first viewing of the actual movie was disappointing because there wasn’t anything she didn’t know about. Is there any way to get around this, in our interconnected world? Probably not.
