'Brokeback Mountain' hits Abilene screens today

By Robert Denerstein / Scripps Howard News Service
January 13, 2006

Director Ang Lee's ''Brokeback Mountain'' - the story of two gay ranch hands beautifully played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal - seems to be on its way to crossover heaven, boasting surprising commercial success and gaining increasing recognition as a pop-cultural phenomenon.

Consider: Over the important Christmas weekend, ''Brokeback's'' per-screen average of $13,599 topped that of ''King Kong'' ($9,305).
In its first 10 days, the Focus Features release earned $2.5 million in 69 locations throughout the nation, according to Box Office Mojo, a Web site that tracks sales.
As of Jan. 2, the movie's domestic take had topped $15 million - and that is without having landed in cities such as Abilene yet (the film opens here today).
Dollars aside, ''Brokeback'' seems to have set off national buzz alarms. A recent Sunday edition of The New York Times carried no less than three ''Brokeback'' stories in different parts of the paper.
But wait ... there's more:
During an end-of-year panel on Fox News, commentator Juan Williams, who has worked for NPR and The Washington Post, predicted that ''Brokeback'' would ''sweep'' this year's Oscars, thus setting off some ''conservative alarms.''
Could be: The movie already has earned seven Golden Globe nominations, including one for best picture, and discussions about the movie aren't likely to abate as Focus continues to release the movie across the country.
The film tells an interesting story well, but its traction with mainstream audiences may result from the fact that the movie does as much to reflect prevailing American mythology as challenge it.
The movie represents an amazing balancing act; it may be about homosexual characters, but it's also shot through with a rugged and familiar romanticism that draws strength from strongly expressed individualism. The sorrow of ''Brokeback'' is palpable, but it's steeped in a gritty Western spirit that knows how to tough things out.
As Ennis Del Mar, the character played by Ledger, says at one point, ''If you can't fix it, you've got to stand it.''
There's not a big-screen cowboy from John Wayne to Clint Eastwood who couldn't have made that line work. Gay or straight, cowboys don't whine. They suffer in silence.
To further ease potential audience anxieties, the sex scenes are tame, at least by the more explicit standards of the gay movies that play the nation's art houses. Lee leaves no doubt that Jack and Ennis are lovers, but he's not using their sexuality in ways that audiences might interpret as ''defiant.''
Because Lee's impulses are artistic rather than propagandistic, the movie's themes have been broadened to include ruminations on the contemporary West and the devastations that result from clinging to romantic illusions.
First, the West: Taking its cue from the Annie Proulx short story on which it's based, ''Brokeback'' (with credit due to screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana) is imbued with an important understanding: The West is both burdened and buoyed by its mythology. Ennis and Jack not only long for one another; they yearn for their time on Brokeback Mountain, where they had the space to be free.
Let's face it: Ennis and Jack wouldn't totally fit into the society that was developing around them even if they were straight. Their attitudes and modes of expression - and even their physical postures - suit Western landscapes. They certainly don't suffer from any macho deficits. It may not seem like it at first, but on reflection, Ennis and Jack fit into the romanticized outcast mode that's also a part of Western lore.
So are we in new territory? Have mainstream audiences shown a sudden tolerance for gay characters? It has happened before. ''La Cage Aux Folles'' (1978) was considered something of a landmark, but it was defined by a giddy, silly spirit that threatened no one. ''Philadelphia'' (1993) had Tom Hanks and a certifiable aura of class, but it arrived with more fanfare than ''Brokeback'' and was regarded by some as more of a disease-of-the-week movie than a gay movie.
It's too early to tell whether ''Brokeback'' signals a cultural shift or just a middlebrow ratification of more avant-garde cultural rumblings. Will the movie help topple walls of resistance and aid those who want to see gay marriage legalized? And what happens if ''Brokeback,'' as some commentators have predicted, wins the Oscar for best picture?
Safe to say we're in a stay-tuned moment in popular culture.

source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/et_movies/article/0,1874,ABIL_7914_4384469,00.html