Friday, February 17, 2006
This is the best of the
Brokeback Mountain parodies. Even better than the
geriatric love in
Back to the Future III. Then again, I've always told my students in Literary Criticism (when we start delving into Queer Theory) that
Top Gun has got to be
the most homoerotic film ever made. And not just because it stars a
paranoid closet queen. 'Nuff said.
[via
the goluboy chronicles]
*and if that doesn't say anything, I don't know what willLabels: film, queer
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, February 16, 2006
11:19 PM |
You Know You Want to Race...
Then you are ready to join ...
You know you want to. Read the guidelines and download the application
here.
Deadline is 15 March 2006.Labels: television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Taylor Hicks, Mandisa, Ace Young, David Radford, Sway Penala, Ayla Brown, Chris Daughtry... Go, go, go! Rickey has more on American Idol's Top 24. I'm just so glad the Brittenum divas didn't get in. (Although I would have loved to see their hissy asses kicked by America.) Then again, they're felons.
Labels: television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
10:01 PM |
Weekly Grocery Lists for Ennis Del Mar & Jack Twist, Summer 1963, Brokeback Mountain
WEEK ONE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey
WEEK TWO
Beans
Ham
Coffee
Whiskey
WEEK THREE
Beans al fresca
Thin-sliced Bacon
Hazelnut Coffee
Sky vodka & Tanqueray gin
K-Y gel
WEEK FOUR
Beans en salade
Pancetta
Coffee (espresso grind)
5-6 bottles best Chardonnay
2 tubes K-Y gel
WEEK FIVE
Fresh fava beans
Jasmine rice
Prosciutto, approx. 8 ounces, thinly sliced Medallions of veal Porcini
mushrooms
1/2 pint of heavy whipping cream
1 Cub Scout uniform, size 42 long
5-6 bottles French Bordeaux (Estate Reserve)
1 extra large bottle Astro-glide
WEEK SIX
Yukon Gold potatoes
Heavy whipping cream
Asparagus (very thin)
Organic Eggs
Spanish Lemons
Gruyere cheese (well aged)
Crushed Walnuts
Arugula
Clarified Butter
Extra Virgin Olive oil
Pure Balsamic vinegar
6 yards white silk organdy
6 yards pale ivory taffeta
3 Cases of Dom Perignon Masters Reserve Large tin Crisco
[from
the goluboy chronicles]
Labels: film, humor, queer
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Never usually succumb to the usual this-is-who-you-are quizzes flooding many blogs, but
this one -- from
banzai cat,
sundialgirl, and
notes from the peanut gallery -- looks and sounds interesting...
If we can reduce
Eating the Sun to a flood of words, it will be...
I notice the prominence of "sex" somewhere in this box.
I am such a pervert.Labels: blogging
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
1:18 PM |
Cleaning Away the Thursday Morning
Fell asleep last night, so I had to postpone my regular nighttime house cleaning to this morning. Which is as well. It's a new experience, doing your dusting and sweeping with the light of day. And singing along with my playlist as well. I love my playlist. Arranged and played alphabetically, it goes from ABBA's "Dancing Queen" to the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields's rendition of Pachelbel's "Canon," with Sir Neville Marriner conducting. You can never get bored with the variety of music. And that's all for now. Back to the dust, and the mildew from last night's merry rain.
Tada!Labels: life, music
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
7:49 PM |
American Divas
"My heart has been broken."
Are Derrell and Terrell Brittenum for real?Hissy bitches.Labels: television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
1.I'm honestly bored with this blogskin. But just the thought of tweaking html again makes me
absolutely tired. I miss white, simple templates with a singular defining image. Like a sunflower. Or coffee beans. Or an apple.
2.I'm watching
Tyra. Why would anybody be scared of pennies? Snake phobia, yes. Even I can understand dolphins.
But pennies?3.Hehehe:
A man and a woman were driving down the road and arguing about his deplorable infidelity. Suddenly the woman reaches over and slices the man's member off. Angrily the woman tosses it out the car window.
Driving behind the couple is a man and his 10-year-old daughter.
The little girl is just chatting away at her father when all of a sudden the penis smacks the pickup on the windshield, sticks for a moment, then flies off.
Surprised, the daughter asks her father, "Daddy, what the heck was that?
Not wanting to expose his ten-year-old daughter to anything sexual at such a young age, the father replies, "It was only a bug, honey.
The daughter sits with a confused look on her face, and after a few minutes she says, "Sure had a big dick, didn't it?"
[from
fhm via
i worship the god in you]
Labels: blogging, humor, television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
12:17 AM |
Heart on Your Sleeve
And just like that...
... it's Valentine's Day.
Keep it safe, y'all.Labels: love
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, February 13, 2006
I've thought about it,
and I've thought about it some more. I've decided I'm not watching ABS-CBN ever again. It's not just because of the
Wowowee stampede tragedy. It's from a slow realization I've had that ABS-CBN has basically screwed and roasted the nation over slow fire for, well,
years. Ah, fuck it, I'm not watching GMA either. Ah, screw it, I'm not watching all of local television anymore.
Masa panderers, all of them.
A TV channel that can effectively push a pawn for the Vice-Presidency, first of all, must be evil. And any channel that can make newsmen out of the Tulfo brothers is the very threshhold to hell.
Then there's the programming.
Too many television shows, for example, are using the plight of the poor as excuse for entertainment, in the guise -- of course -- of "helping them out." (I'm not even going to try to expound on that. So many bloggers and columnists have already touched on the noontime shows' unwitting contribution to the "dole out" mentality of the population.) Paradoxically, shows like these "glamorize" the poor's lives, their dirt poor living being the sole reason why the camera is staring at them in the first place. Carmen Guerrero Nakpil (or was it Gilda Cordero Fernando? or was it
Barbara C. Gonzalez?) reflected on this idea recently in an Op-Ed column, using the growth of the railway slum population with
Home Along Da Riles as prism and catalyst. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the link to that article anymore.)
My own epiphany about TV's vampiric take on poverty came about when Jerome Salas, the recent winner of
Search for the Star in a Million, edged out the singing competition (despite the terrible voice and the lackluster stage presence) -- all because he made the judges' middle-class hearts soften when he mentioned that he wanted to join the contest because, among other things,
he no longer had any pairs of underwear left. I remember turning to my buddy after that moment, and telling him: "They made him win, because he doesn't have underwear anymore?"
I want TV shows that edify. Or at least be realistic about stories revolving around poverty, without coming close to "romanticizing" it. (The way Lino Brocka did. Although admittedly, sometimes he tended towards third-world overkill. Remember the horrible Sharon Cuneta-starrer
Pasan Ko ang Daigdig?) Or at least entertain us without making
bobos of us all. Sure, we can laugh at the barely-scripted adlibs and asides from our
curiously overlong sitcoms, but don't you get that feeling afterwards that you've just wasted away precious time over absolutely nothing? Why don't our sitcoms, by the way, have any discernable story arc? No punchlines, no tension, all forced comedy -- with a gazillion cast members gathering in firing squad formation to deliver just one (mostly unfunny) line, and works for the laugh via quick slapstick. (Usually a punch, or a face.)
Where is our
Oprah? (And please don't say Kris Aquino, or Boy Abunda.) There was a moment when GMA's
Sis riveted us with its surprisingly intelligent gab fest -- but soon diluted itself quickly into a mini-variety show complete with a horoscope-reading drag queens. (That tendency to quickly deteriorate into
masa mush was what killed, if you remember, the original
Game Ka Na Ba? ABS-CBN reformatted the popular game show into a mess I cannot even begin to describe, and soon quickly left the air. It was a horrible "next level." It is the same with the popular dramas, most of which TV producers stretch out for the advertising mileage, so much so that they become convoluted and hysterical.) I remember Sarah Jessica Parker saying that she had to let go of
Sex and the City, because they were running out of good stories to tell. Better to leave at the top of the pack, than to leave whimpering to the gallows. I wish sometimes that Filipino TV producers have the same tact.
Where is our
Lost? Our
Sex and the City? Our
Will and Grace? Our
The Sopranos, or
Six Feet Under? Our
The Office? In Russia,
television is now all about lush adaptations of Dr. Zhivago, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Master and Margarita, The First Circle, and The Golden Calf. In Poland, it is the entire
Decalogue by Krysztoff Kieslowski.
There are moments of brilliance that soon cannot sustain themselves. About two years ago, ABS-CBN launched a spirited late-night drama
Buttercup that promised to be an intelligent
St. Elmo's Fire for the Filipino televiewer. After a promising start, it became trite and predictable, right down to the effeminate caricature courtesy of Onemig Bondoc.
Sometimes I wonder where our brilliant writers are in all of these... And I do know many of them who now work for television. The reply from many of them is always the same: the "edifying" concepts I've mentioned simply do not sell
daw to the typical Filipino audience. And television is all about ratings,
di ba?
But it just so happens I don't believe in that bullshit. When Oprah made the move to stop becoming a copycat of
Jerry Springer or
Donahue, and instead focus on enlightening fare, she was warned that the concept would flop. Guess who's laughing all the way to the bank now. ("What about
Points of View?" you say. "Brilliant gab show. Nobody watched it." I will retort: "Four words: Studio 23. UHF channel.")
Then again, I am unapologetically
burgis -- so really, this is just my
burgis two-centavos' worth.
Labels: issues, television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
12:45 PM |
Where is the Philippine Literature Website?
Now that I finally have DSL, I am finishing the long-delayed resurrection of my
Survey of Philippine Literature website. It's about time, don't you think?
Labels: philippine literature
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
11:45 AM |
The Valentine Your Favorite Sharon Cuneta Love Song Poll!
Come now,
admit it. Given that Valentine's Day is but a day away, you're probably listening to all your
Sharon Cuneta love songs right now as you read this. So here's the poll...
Labels: celebrity, music
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
12:14 AM |
Love for the Lonesome
"That's the way love goes."--
Janet JacksonOne of my favorite lines from a poem comes from
Danton Remoto's elegantly sad
"The Way We Live." It is not a love poem, but a poetically-rendered chart of modern living. So why am I writing about it just in time for Valentine's Day? It defines for me, perhaps, what drives people to seek comfort in other people's arms.
Opening first to stanzas exploring the various ways with which we set tempo to our modern, cosmopolitan lives, the poem leads to this epiphany:
Of listening to stories at Cine Cafe:
the first eye-contact,
conversations glowing
in the night,
lips and fingers touching,
groping for each other's loneliness.
That last line -- about "groping for each other's loneliness" -- somehow always gets me, and not usually because I am a regular sentimental schmuck who sees poetic distillation of pathos and bursts to knowing tears. It gets me, because it somehow refines to naked essence the formula with which we have trapped ourselves in trying to connect with other people in what can be described as an Age of Disconnection. I always tell my literature classes when we come around to discussing Danton's poem, that one of the saddest pictures indicative of the sorry state we live in is when I once saw a couple of college friends seated opposite each other around a cafe table, the drone of traffic about them, both of them wrapped up in silence and with the marvelous dexterity of their fingers on cellphone keys --
busy texting each other.
Consider that picture, and consider the "connections" we so long want to foster through the blind, bottle-in-the-ocean means of mIRC chatting, Internet personals, blogging, Friendster and Downelink, etcetera. This is increasingly an Age of Disconnection, chiefly made up of loneliness, its symptoms still in the margins but rising steadily as cities grow, as cosmopolitan alienation mounts, as technology becomes even more sophisticated to a degree wherein nobody has to leave their own houses,
or rooms, any more. (Japan, the most densely populated country in the world and also the most technologically-advanced, there is now a phenomenon called
hikikomori where increasing numbers of young men and women have retreated to their apartments or bedrooms for years, to come out only once every few months to buy new CDs to download to their iPODs.)
That gets me: how we "grope" -- such a powerful verb that denotes longing and furtiveness -- to find connection, if only to fill-in our unsaid, unacknowledged loneliness: basically two emptinesses defying the negative space to make up even just a shred of fulfillment.
But you might say this is a harsh way of viewing the world. "Love still exists and abounds," you can very well retort. I do not doubt you that. In fact, if there is any comfort at all in this observation, Valentine's Day in the Philippines is fast becoming an industry, a regular sell-out celebration of all those roses and cards and hotel rooms and tickets to dinners at the swankiest restaurants all over every city. Love abounds -- but disconnection also seems to be keeping even strides to it as well. Sometimes, when I am out on a Valentine dinner myself and I happen to scan the candle-lit room, I see that there are just too many couples becoming the very illustration of Remoto's line. Sometimes that saddens me.
And sometimes, the very same thing shatters me.
I still remember, after all these days, Ang Lee's
Brokeback Mountain -- the perfect Valentine's Day film date if you can ever have one. Bring a box of Kleenex because, while it is a movie about the transcendence of love, it is also about the tragic consequences of loneliness and disconnection, and how often we choose to forego of love because society often cruelly dictates that some connections are just "not right" at all. Everywhere in the world, the film has sparked much debate, loathing,
and loving -- more often because it breaks ground in the fact that it is a gay cowboy movie, and the first one of its kind to be a serious contender for moviedom's top prize: the Oscar. (It has also become a surprise hit, becoming the heart-tugging favorite of the unlikeliest demographic:
straight women, the same crowd who made
Titanic the most-watched film of all time.)
Like I've said before in this blog, I saw
Brokeback Mountain more than a week ago. Finishing it, I found the weight of its tragedy and love story, as well as its cinematic silences, too heavy to bear. It made me almost catatonic. I stopped whatever it was I was doing. I did not write. I did not go out much. I replayed and replayed the DVD, to the point where I could almost smell the snow-capped mountains of Wyoming themselves.
I had no idea how to exactly articulate what I felt. I felt mute. What to say, after all, about the best-reviewed film of 2005? Based on
a short story by Pulitzer-winning author
Annie Proulx, the story charts the lives of two young cowboys Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) who meet one summer herding sheep in the beautiful mountains of Wyoming. One fateful night of discovery changes their lives -- even after coming down from the mountains, and even after their respective marriages to other people, and even after the silence of the years since then. When they finally meet up once more, they are surprised to find there is still that consuming passion between them. And yet, given the moral restrictions of both time and geography (Wyoming, after all, is where
Matthew Shepard was murdered in the
1990s for being gay), they chose to keep the relationship a secret -- without success, because contraband secrets always have a way of spilling over our lives and disrupting everything in it.
The film is what you would call a typical doomed love story fashioned out of
Romeo and Juliet, this time with a gay twist and the Marlboro man put in to upset that longtime icon of American maleness. But how exactly did a small movie about love-torn cowboys manage to become the most-talked about film of the year? And why did it render me silent? If you remember, the film critic
Erik Lundegaard provided me with the answer.
Be careful with
Brokeback Mountain. It can consume you. It will certainly become a landmark of sorts in your mind's geography, and you will wonder how one small and quiet cowboy film can render you meditative, and silent, and envying how people can love with such passion, and how people can grapple heroically, and with tragic consequences, with loneliness and despair.
Labels: film, love, queer
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, February 10, 2006
I don't know when
Friendster died for me.
(Does anybody remember my frantic swooning over the site more than two years ago? I'm embarrassed by that now.) Maybe it was when I reached my 500 friends limit, and just got tired of the idea of having to open another account like most of my friends. Maybe it was when I got deluged by all these requests for testimonials. Maybe it was just online fatigue. Maybe it just got too popular, even the kids in grade school got accounts. Maybe...
Friendster's lame now.
And Amanda Egge sort of blames the Philippines. Ha.I just check it for birthdays now. And to occasionally stalk.
That's about it.Labels: life, web and tech
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
My
best friend has a new column in Australia...
Hehehe. This makes me extremely giddy.
Labels: friends
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, February 09, 2006
1.To all Dumaguete workshop fellows over the years: Mom Edith was in the hospital recently because she had mild dengue. Your prayers for her quick recovery would certainly be nice. And I really hope you can visit this summer. That should cheer her up: all her children at her feet.
2.Dominique Cimafranca has
an interesting take on the
Wowowee tragedy and the existence of a caste system in the Philippines.
3.Bennett Miller's
Capote was a strange, perhaps even nauseating, experience. I like it, but it left me with dread -- the same kind you get when you've drank too much coffee on an empty stomach. More than a snapshot of the famous literary lion in the middle of researching and writing
In Cold Blood (Salon has
a good article about its writing), it is also an indictment of writers -- how we can be vampires of real lives, to make our own fiction or non-fiction. Sometimes I feel that way, and sometimes it shames me.
Just sometimes.4.What do you know? Let's take a look at my list. Bennett Miller's
Capote. (Liked it.) Ang Lee's
Brokeback Mountain. (Loved it.) George Clooney's
Good Night and Good Luck. (Admired it.) And Paul Haggis's
Crash.
(Hated it.) This leaves me Steven Spielberg's
Munich as the only still-to-see in my
Oscar best picture list. How's your score card?
5.In
Salon, philosopher
Daniel Dennett argues that America is drowning in religion -- and that faith needs to be analyzed with the tools of science: "I'm proposing we break the spell that creates an invisible moat around religion, the one that says, 'Science stay away. Don't try to study religion.' But if we don't understand religion, we're going to miss our chance to improve the world in the 21st century. Just about every major problem we have interacts with religion: the environment, injustice, discrimination, terrible economic imbalances and potential genocide. In our own country, the religious attitudes of people are clearly interfering with the political discussion. So if we fail to understand why religions have the effects they do on people, we will screw up our efforts to solve these problems."
True.6.Ari is back! Pupu-platter has a post on
the history of gold in the Philippines.7.Manuel L. Quezon III considers
the Imeldific connection to the Ultra tragedy.
8.With the film adaptation of Dan Brown's (highly stupid)
The Da Vinci Code fast coming our way,
the Opus Dei is in virtual panic. Can you say image problems?
9.I should just stop procrastinating, stop blogging, and go back to finishing my story for the Fully Booked contest.
Labels: film, philippine literature, religion
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
1:04 PM |
A Eulogy of Roaches*
By Bienvenido LumberaBlessed are the cockroaches.
In this country they are
the citizens who last.
They need no police
to promulgate their peace
because they tolerate
each other's smell or greed.
Friends to dark and filth,
they do not choose their meat.
Although they neither sow
nor reap, a daily feast
is laid for them in rooms
and kitchens for their pick.
The roaches do not spin
and neither do they weave.
But note the russet coat
the sluggards wear: clothed
at birth, roaches require
no roachy charity.
They settle where they wish
and have no rent to pay.
Eviction is a word
quite menacing to them
who do not have to own
their dingy crack of wall
Not knowing dearth or taxes,
they increase and multiply.
Survival is assured
even the jobless roach;
his opportunities
pile up where garbage grows.
Dying is brief and cheap
and thus cannot affright.
A whiff of toxic mist,
an agile heel, a stick
--the swift descent of pain
is also final death.
* wiser people like the sassy lawyer and mlq3 have said, and documented, everything I need to say about the Wowowee stampede tragedy, so perhaps the better recourse for me is to post poetry that holds a mirror to why these things happen in our countryLabels: philippine literature
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
1.I just got this in the mail from my wonderful Chicago-based friend
Tedo, and it gives me the goosebumps...
You can say, "Whaaa...? He gets excited over a book of film reviews?"
You bet. Because, if you haven't noticed it by now, I'm a big fan of the thumbs-up guy
Roger Ebert (or as Mark calls him, "Robert Egert,"
hehehe). That he is the only film reviewer who has ever won the Pulitzer Prize should say something about the man. (He also wrote the screenplay for the cult classic
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the brilliant boob-fest from the genius of Russ Meyer.) I really just think that Ebert makes intelligent, passionate, thought-provoking reviews that are actually accessible (read: readable), compared to the mumbo-jumbo of the reviewers from
The Village Voice and
The New York Times who seem too self-conscious about their status as culture arbiters.
Do not even mention Nestor U. Torre or Michael Medved. (The only other film reviewers I read with passion are Pauline Kael, who's sadly gone, and the bitchy-witchy duo of
The New Yorker's Anthony Lane, who's just being an irreverent Englishman, and
Premiere's Libby Gelman-Wexler, who is of course Paul Rudnick channeling a Manhattan socialite who cares as much for her Manolo Blahniks as for the new Terrence Malick).
But you know what excited me more? Tedo managed to snag Ebert's autograph in the fly of the book. It says:
To Ian,
Movie lover.
[signed] Roger Ebert
12.17.05
Ahhhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Thanks, Tedo!
2.On the aftermath of the Ultra stampede tragedy, the always-sensible Michael Tan has
some good insight on mob rule, Filipinos, queuing, and civilization.
3.Here's the
leak on the American Idol top 25, courtesy of Rickey.
Labels: film, issues
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
9:30 AM |
Carol Banawa in American Idol?
Because here are the pictures that seem to prove she auditioned in Austin, Texas.
And according to the rumor mill, the judges passed. Simon supposedly said, "You're good, but boring.
Ouch.The
Chikadora has more, well,
chika.
In the meantime, over at
rickey's, things are abuzzing about the new season, with one Filipino guy by the name of
Jose "Sway" Penala supposedly making it to the top 24. (But he's also generating some controversy as well.)
I know, I know.
Blast American Idol. Why are we drawn to this thing again?
Labels: music, television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Saturday, February 04, 2006
2:14 AM |
The Silence and Brokeback Mountain
I can tell you the reason for my silence of the past four days. Sure, there was work. But to be honest, a movie made me weep, that's all. This
MSNBC article by Erik Lundegaard is probably the best review I've read so far of
Brokeback Mountain. It somehow crystallizes for me what I earnestly feel about the movie.
Because, like my friend James, I am still in shock and in a kind of terrible awe coming from that date with my DVD copy. I am in some kind of possession that has rendered me sleepless for three nights now, unable to even articulate what it
is exactly
about the movie that has struck a deep,
deep chord in me. It is not the familiar gay narrative even. It is certainly something far beyond the tiresome debates of sexuality. It is not even the spare dialogue -- with Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapting the rugged simplicity of Anne Proulx's words -- peaking to what has now become the catchphrase for the lovelorn:
"I wish I knew how to quit you."
But that last scene got me: Ennis del Mar -- played with such internal intensity and immense control by the Oscar-nominated Heath Ledger -- opening his closet in his cramped trailer home, and tearing at the sight of their (his and Jack's) well-worn Brokeback Mountain plaid shirts hanging from wire hanger, the only thing about -- and from them -- permitted to be
that close. His silence and his tears spoke more to me than anything else. And by God, I cried, too -- damn
Brokeback Mountain.
Lundegaard writes:
When I finally saw Brokeback I found it nearly perfect. It's more than a love story; it's really about loneliness, which is a more universal emotion anyway. Some of us haven't been in love; some of us don't believe in love. Everyone's been lonely.
It's ambiguous enough to argue about endlessly. Heath Ledger's Ennis del Mar feels like the man in the film -- in the one sex scene, he gives rather than receives -- and he's taciturn and bottled-up in the way of men. He talks with his fists, and sometimes he talks too much, but he's gentle with women and never has a harsh word for his daughters. One could argue he's what we want the American man to be. As Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times, "I don't know a single straight woman who hasn't been involved with a man as emotionally thwarted as Ennis, the man who can't tell you how he feels because he may not honestly know." Exactly....
But Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist actually outmans Ennis. Jack won't be circumscribed by society. He stands up to his father-in-law, he stands up to his father, he stands up. He tries to live his dreams. Forget everyone else. Forget Ennis, too. If Ennis won't have the ranch with Jack, Jack will just have it with someone else.
Ennis isn't strong like that. He's so scared of who he is he begins to disappear within himself. An early shot shows him leaning against the boss-man's trailer, head down, cowboy hat covering his face. It's cowboy cool a la James Dean. Throughout the film Ennis keeps that cowboy hat covering his face but with each frame it becomes more tragic -- a man too scared to be seen. Don't look at my face because you might see who I am. He gives himself a smaller and smaller spot on which to live his increasingly shrunken life. The movie begins with youth and wide-open vistas and ends in middle-age in a tiny trailer. The one scene that broke my heart is wholly ordinary: Ennis, alone in a cafeteria booth, head down, picking at a piece of pie. He's alone, and will remain alone, no matter how many waitresses try to drag his ass onto the dance floor.
This is why the movie is striking a chord with the non-gay community. Ennis resonates because he reminds us of some part of us. Life has such possibilities, and from lack of courage or weariness or outright fear we allow it to shrink us into this small, sad space doing this small, sad thing. Don't look at my face because you might see who I am. The film does what it's supposed to do. It's specific but it's universal.
But forget all reviews, all the Oscar nominations, and all that has been said about this movie, if you plan to see it soon. You might expect too much from it to be able to appreciate its deliberate quiet and its slow reach for its epic of love and ultimate tragedy. Because this is, most of all, a movie about meditation, about silences. And once you let yourself be pulled in by its story,
Brokeback Mountain will remain a landmark in your mind's geography: how one small and quiet cowboy film could render you meditative, and silent, and envying how people can love with such passion, and how people can grapple heroically, and with tragic consequences, with loneliness and despair.
Labels: film, queer
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
GO TO OLDER POSTS
GO TO NEWER POSTS
