This Oscar season is now upon us, and for the first time ever, it’s looking like Mr. Faded Glory may actually see all five Best Picture nominees before the envelope is opened and Brokeback Mountain gets the award.
I can’t remember exactly where, but the buzz around this year’s awards are that the movies nominated are stronger than usual. Well, I’m not exactly sure about that.
In the last two years, we’ve watched an epic take home one award — if only because of the monumental task of crafting that four-hour saga (and additionally turning it into something acceptable to the masses instead of just huge geeks) and a disappointing tearjerker take home the other.
In both years, deserving films that do hold up (Mystic River, Lost in Translation, Sideways) were denied the honor. Both far outpace this year’s nominees as well.
Regardless, in the coming weeks, I’ll talk a little bit more about each best picture nominee I have seen, starting with today’s topic — Brokeback Mountain.
As you know, Mister-Faded-Glory lurks in the heart of conservative country, middle Kansas, also the heart of wanna-be-a-cowboy country, middle Kansas. Rest assured, we were all surprised when the local multiplex acquired Brokeback Mountain for this weekend. What a shock! Would there be protesters? Picketing? Angry Republicans dousing moviegoers with gasoline?
Well, none of that happened (Maybe any protesters knew something we didn’t), but I did go to BBM last night with Ms. Faded Glory, both of us optimistic and eager to see what all the fuss was about. I hardly need to remind you about all the accolades and praise BBM has received, or even the difficulty for any movie to live up to that amount of hype. And suffice it to say, BBM does not.
Now, I realize that my movie tastes likely do not reflect the public’s or even the critics‘. I despise movies that are:
1. Epics
2. Period pieces.
3. Slow-moving romances
4. Westerns.
(You’re laughing at me, wondering why I suspended all my preconceived biases. Keep laughing, it gets better.)
That’s not to say I couldn’t have come around on this one. I was optimistic for this movie because I’d heard repeatedly that:
a. It’s a powerful love and/or coming-of-age story.
b. It’s extremely well done.
It’s neither. Both of these notions are vaulted into lofty status simply because the two principles are gay. This was my greatest fear going into BBM, that it was yet another gimmicky movie that Hollywood, critics, and the public are all enjoying simply because the gay principle characters are different. Maybe no critic yet had the guts to eviscerate this movie (Well, one comes close here), instead feeling pressured to vindicate the filmmakers, as if they’re championing some landmark cause.
It’s the kind of movie that generated this early buzz because it was so “different” — and then gained more legs, morphing into an animal that everyone raves about, simply because they don’t want to seem unenlightened, or simply because everyone else has told them it was fantastic. Like any Radiohead record. Or — and stop me if we’ve been here before, Ang — Crouching Loser and Hidden Asshat, or whatever that movie was called. It had buzz upon buzz — and it was nothing more than a blah kung-fu movie.
All of that buzz, all of the supposed-shock at man-on-man action, all the competent acting (Heath Ledger is quite good portraying the manners, emotions, and ticks of the intensely-private cowboy), can’t make up for one thing.
The plot sucks. I mean, it sucks.
The movie is completely forced at the beginning. The interaction between Jake and Heath (I’m discussing them with the actors’ names, like Tiger Beat) is rudimentary and choppy, and there is absolutely no hint that the two are attracted to one another at first –or even in the first half-hour of the movie.
This love appears out of nowhere — there’s no symbolism, action, or dialogue to convey the elevation of a beginning friendship into more. Similarly, there’s none to convey that the two even were becoming friends – let alone bed buddies. It’s a credibility problem. (Plus they are sheep farmers! On Brokeback Mountain! Seriously, what the hell were any of us thinking? Unbelievable.)
And though the movie lost me right there, Ledger’s character study almost redeems this entire exercise. The film promises more with each of his scenes, though it never delivers. They only scratch the surface of Heath’s life, as he goes through a tumultous and painful 20 years — glossed over simply to focus on the two males’ awkward meetings throughout. Ledger pretty much throws his life away for chance meetings with this guy, and he plays it well enough that you can empathize a little. He loses his family, jobs, and himself, all for Jake. But because it’s rarely delved into — it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and it’s nothing we won’t see again. There’s more of a story behind Heath, and even a chance for the movie to be different — but that’s ignored time and again as this hopeless schmaltz plods along.
The movie drags, never getting over the choppiness that plagues even its earliest attempts at character development, and it features lines that should damn its best picture status immediately, like “I wish I could quit you, Ennis.” (In the theater, I was practically banging my head with a 2×4.).
Add to that, the flick is accompanied in its dramatic moments with a twangy banjo score that has all the subtlety of a WWF match. BBM is just utter sludge, going on for two miserable hours, and it’s certainly nothing new, advanced, or ground-breaking. It’s the worst of all worlds. It’s a bad western, a bad chick flick, a bad drama. Yet somehow it’s supposedly the best movie of 2005. Geh. Cripes, Titanic‘s love story had more subtext.
And with BBM, you can’t shake the feeling walking out of there like you’ve been conned. As if the filmmakers know exactly what buttons they’re pushing, like they’re laughing at inside jokes that are obvious (sheep farmers!!!!), and like they’re giggling as paychecks and golden statues arrive by the truckload.
You get the feeling the filmmakers (Using the same philosophy as Kate Winslet in her hilarious spoof and self-portrayal in the BBC series Extras) knew this crappy film had Oscar written all over it from the beginning, regardless of obstacles like, oh-I-don’t-know, a story. And, just like another supposed, lavish, Oscar masterpiece –The English Patient — they tugged all the typical heartstrings and uttered all the typical lines, all the way to film glory.
In closing (and because I couldn’t figure out how to work it in elsewhere), last weekend I saw Memoirs of a Geisha with my wife, who usually likes historical, period epics, especially if they’re love stories, and especially if they’re focused on a woman. So she loved MOAG. And really, neither of these are much different. They’re both long, slow, drivelous love stories, set in the past, with no real twists, turns, or subplots. Both are filmed and acted as if each scene is attempting to be an “Oscar Clip.” For some reason, however, MOAG has been punished while BBM is lauded.
This movie will probably walk away with the Best Picture trophy, lauded for its originality and daring, though it’s simply the latest in a long line of underwhelming winners. As stated previously, it’s rare that a movie could live up to the colossal hype and praise heaped upon BBM — it’s also rare that a movie proves to be exactly the opposite.
