Down from the Mountain...

'Round about nine days ago, when we headed down to the Esquire to check out Brokeback Mountain, the film was only viewable there and had just been expanded onto two screens. Even at that, the theater was absolutely packed at the 7:15 Friday night showing.

The biggest problem that I had with the film was the odd cinematography - everyone's heads appeared to be really tiny while their feet were unnaturally large, almost as though the filmmakers had shot the entire movie with the camera on the ground, shooting upward at the actors. Initially in the showing, I found this off-putting and it took a long while to get used to the look.

True, this might all have been because I was sitting in the front row darn-near lying down in my chair to look up at the film, but it could've been the filmmakers intent. How am I to know?

Let me open by saying that all the spectacular reviews that the film has been getting are richly deserved. The film is phenomenal and easily one of the finest to have been made in the last half dozen years.

The plotline is simple - Ennis and Jack meet on the titular Mountain, fall in love, and go their separate ways once they come down from the Mountain, and see each other haltingly over the next twenty or so years while leading lives that are much more socially acceptable. Were the two leads a man and a woman, the film would be a simple enough story of a love denied, two people doing everything they can to lead lives that don't involve each other but finiding themselves unable to give up the increasingly limited visits together. As the leads are two men, however, the film moves toward grounbreaking territory, as this is far and away the most mainstream movie to feature a not-at-all-veiled romance between two men. And I will admit that the physical aspects of the romance are not avoided. Neither are they, however, dwelt upon. The two men fall into bed together for the first time, and we are shown the rough initiation of their affair as well as their first more tender kiss the following night. The moments are intentionally akward and a bit carnal, but no more so than they would be between two reluctant lovers who find themselves falling together.

The movie uses space and silence beautifully, showing the distance that the two men try to keep between each other and the reluctance that they both show toward exploring their feelings, feelings that they have been taught never to even consider. They both try their hand - with limited success - at a more conventional life and try to maintain their relationship in stolen weekends and weeks of fishing and horse riding, sometimes broaching the subject of a life lived together but never allowing themselves the chance.

The movie is a tale of love denied, and lives broken by that love. It is truly a conventional story filmed and acted marvelously, but with the simple Twist of making the love a homo- rather than heterosexual one.

The film is outstanding and gorgoues, powerful and moving, and wonderfully adapted from a very short (25 pages) story that my wife swears is an excellent read. It does take a leap of faith - a smaller and smaller one thanks to the growing acceptance within our society - to see the movie as such, and I am happy to say that it's now playing at my local multiplex instead of just down at the arthouse in the most liberal part of Cincinnati.