Brokeback Molehill

I felt like I was one of the last people to watch Brokeback Mountain. There have been so many jokes floating around, the movie had become the new excuse to make jokes about gays, as Pee-Wee Herman had been the lightning rod for masturbation jokes and Michael Jackson and the Catholic church had been for molestation jokes. So I felt like I was the last person on the planet who owned a TV and DVD player and yet had not watched the movie.

So I rented it and watched it. Now, of course, I have questions. Mainly just one: What's the joke?

The movie focuses on a pair of men who work one summer for a rancher, tending to a particular piece of land and the sheep that graze on it. They become close, and eventually fall in love. It's a condemned love, mainly because homosexuality wasn't recognized as being anything but immoral and unacceptable in the time frame in which the movie takes place. They make mention that it existed, but that the consequences for being discovered were dire.

I'm not the first person to suggest the the main theme of the movie was their love and not the fact that they were gay. The movie is genuine when it conveys that this is its purpose, to show two men who are madly in love with each other but have to live with the fact that their love is taboo.

Now, I'm all for a doomed love story. I find a movie far more satisfying if someone dies than if there is a storybook happy ending. But I was disappointed that the filmmaker didn't go the distance. I felt the love between the two characters because the actors were really that good. But the movie fails them. It never really gets into the heart of what a crazy, obsessive love is like.

Why? Because crazy, obsessive love involves sex. LOTS of sex. The dialogue in the flick alludes to the fact that they are meeting up to have sex, but aside from the first (and only) sex scene between them, nothing more than passionate kissing is shown. (And that's only once as well, intended mainly to keep continuity moving along.) The sad fact is that passionate crazy sex and kissing between gay characters in a major Hollywood movie is presented as nothing more than shock value entertainment.

Which is where all the lame jokes come in. The movie sells itself out by starting something that it's not willing to finish. Crazy love means crazy sex. I hate to burst anyone's morality bubble here, but crazy sex happens between gays and lesbians just as much as it does heteros. Thing is, crazy sex between two members of the same sex does not sell if it's portrayed honestly. So there are bound to be "Spongebob Brokeback Pants" bulletins. (Excuse me while I puke at the stupidity of people yet again.)

If the characters in the movie had been a man and a women, there would have been a whole lot more nudity and bumping of skins shown. People wouldn't have batted an eyelash. And the movie never would have gotten the press attention that it did. Don't get me wrong, Brokeback Mountain is a good movie. But it's not GREAT. Far from it. It's another average love story.

Some of you might think that I'm ridiculous for suggesting that a gay love story is average, but to me it is. Seeing two men in a loving, caring relationship is nothing new to me. Seeing two men in a crazy, sex-drenched relationship is nothing new to me either. Listening to two men have loud sex in the room next to mine... yeah, I'm still not nonplussed. None of it bothers me. Love is love is love when you have it, no matter what set of genitals that you both are packing.

So, sorry Heath and Jake. Nice try, I admire your efforts. Maybe someday people will get their heads out of their asses long enough to have a movie starring two gay actors in an honest portrayal of a gay relationship, resplendent with lots of guy on guy lovin'. Til then, I'll just rent My Beautiful Launderette again and have a good laugh.

But then again, that was a British movie. Perhaps that says it all right there.