(no subject)

[green_queen]

Ang Lee takes Venice Golden Lion.

Hell yeah.

Also, a review from Jeffrey Wells.

I have to leave for an Ang Lee-James Schamus interview in about 25 minutes, so let's move on to a less anguished confession, which is that Friday's penultimate high, far and away, was seeing Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain.

I'd been hearing from friends who saw it at Telluride that it's an immensely moving film about love denied, but even with this advance preparation I was a bit surprised at how moved I was by it.

Brokeback Mountain is a tremendously sad film in the best way imaginable. It's not a downer but a profound and very touching tragedy, between which there is a very marked difference.

I will no longer feel comfortable calling this (as everyone else has for the last several months) a "gay cowboy" film because it's an good and profound enough creation that calling it that (a fair if blunt description) is like calling Lawrence of Arabia the story of a gay sadomasochistic British adventurer in white robes on a camel.

I'm saying that the carefully rendered heart of this film, along with the artistic conviction and craftsmanship that have combined to push the essence of it through, are much stronger than the nominal subject matter.

Brokeback Mountain is Ang Lee's most emotionally moving film ever. It is certainly going to be on almost everyone's ten-best list, and it may well be nominated for Best Picture by the Academy. It is that good, that strong.

I never thought I'd say this because I don't tend to like (i.e., respond to with comfort or true openness of feeling) gay-guy love stories, but I felt this one...it got through and I let it in.

And apart from the guiding hand of Ang Lee, this happened to a large extent because of Heath Ledger's tortured inhabiting of Ennis del Mar, the more repressed and tragic of the two lead characters.

Jake Gyllenhaal gives everything he has to the role of Jack Twist, and he nails it as well as anyone could, but Ennis suppresses his feelings more forcefully and fearfully (it's not just his words that sound like they're sitting somewhere deep in his stomach and afraid to come out), and his life is therefore much more screwed up than Jack's as a result, and so he gets you all the more.

Ledger gives the performance of his life in this film. He will win awards, he will get great reviews...his career has been pretty much saved by this film.

And he will almost certainly be nominated for...I don't know what category they're going to put him in but they should push for Best Supporting Actor. Who knows if he'll win or not, but he makes this character and the burden he carries into a searing and poignant thing.

You know what? I'm gonna keep on calling it a gay cowboy movie. It may be a lot of other things as well, brilliant and moving and love story and blah blah blah. But there are boys making out and having sex in cowboy hats and it makes me happy, dammit.

Still, Nice to see the positive reviews flow in.

Also, apparently Elizabethtown is not getting the rave reviews hoped for. I am concerned.

Green Queen

Comments

[flamingo-killer.livejournal.com]

Dude LMAO I totally didn't read the "review from Jeffrey Wells" part and I was like WTF you're going to an interview with Ang Lee? That seems like something you would have, you know, maybe MENTIONED...and then I started reading and for a split second I was all, "AH! WHY HAVE YOU SEEN IT WTF?!~!@!!!1!`"

And then my brain turned back on.

It's a little early.

[kaidysoft.livejournal.com]

Elizabethtown isn't getting good reviews???? oh noes...it looked so good from teh trailers...

[green-queen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. It looks good to me, and I'm *this close* to believing that Orli might be able to act. I mean, sometimes reviewers are full of shit, and it IS Cameron Crowe after all. Also, the script is fabulous.

We'll see, I guess.