Movie reviews
Dec. 19th, 2005 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI am having a hard time motivating myself to post anything and really battling the depresso-grief, but I feel like I have to post something... and also to thank my anonymous LJ fairy who gave me a couple months' paid journal time. I really appreciate it, and wish I could thank you in person.
This is one of a handful of movies I was eagerly awaiting most of the year and knew I could not wait to see this once it arrived on DVD. It was every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be, maybe better in some ways because I've become very wary of the biopic in general, particularly the newly fashionable "blows the standard biopic away" hyperbole being leveraged onto a lot of recent product, particularly Ray last year. There seem to be two camps right now: the camp that believes Ray far outshines Walk as a better biopic, and the camp that believes the opposite. I'm in the latter camp. While I thought Ray was a fine movie in many respects, it bored me to exhaustion, especially in the chronicling of his middle years.
What I found much more appealing about Walk was the focus on a specific range of time, once we get the obligatory life as a child, suffering/torment, early adulthood move into music stuff out of the way (and in Walk, I found all that standard introductory material much more engaging than in Ray). Part of it may simply be that I find a story about a man's descent into drug addiction because it helps kill the pain of not being able to have the woman he loves somehow much more interesting and affecting than one of a guy who just loves to do drugs and womanize. I adore both musicians, but something about Johnny Cash, his conservative middle of the road Bible Belt Christian and hipster badass personas jumbled up together, just makes for a better story.
And Joaquin Phoenix is totally up to the task of portraying him in all this mixed-up glory. It was eerie at times to see how well he channeled all these aspects of Cash's personality, and he does a phenomenal job of imitating Cash's vocal style even though he can't match it exactly. This may also be why I'm in the Walk camp more than the Ray camp -- I've never been especially impressed with Jamie Foxx, and the fact that he does lip-synch in the movie, where Phoenix sings, affected my perspective pretty strongly. Reese Witherspoon surprised me with her take on June, and the rest of the cast is note-perfect throughout. The one person in the cast, though, who will probably be overlooked come awards time is Robert Patrick, and I think it's criminal that he's not getting more attention for this. When he and a drug-addled, pained Johnny stare each other down at a Thanksgiving dinner, they speak volumes of their hate and disappointment and regrets, and I was completely bowled over by his performance. He never stints on the hatefulness of Cash's dad, and yet somehow finds a core of humanity in him that almost shouldn't be there.
While it has the same surfing through someone's life quality that most biopics have, Walk doesn't stint on developing relationships with side characters, something that has grown tiresome for me. We usually get glancing blows of people Our Famous Subject has known; here, the movie takes its time in developing a picture of Cash on the road to fame with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the rest of his rock 'n' roll contemporaries -- and it makes it clear that Johnny Cash was not a "country" star, but a rock star. Another thing I felt strongly from this movie was that there was no apology for Cash's behavior. As much as I love Ray Charles's music, he's a pretty hard sell as a human being for me -- he cheats on his wife and treats all women like dirt, he's unrepentant about his drug abuse and the pain it inflicts on others, and he's not generally a likeable guy despite how he overcame adversity and all that. Walk the Line taps into what made Cash a genuinely interesting guy who was very likeable when he wasn't a drugged-out jerk, and who adored one woman so much it changed his life. I came away from Walk feeling for Johnny Cash, in a way I never did for Ray Charles from that movie. Ray is nearly hagiographical in its treatment of a guy that, despite oodles of talent, isn't always so great; Walk seems to get that you have show us everything and let us make up our minds.
I would have liked to know more about two things, and wish they could have incorporated more into the story: first, what drove his fascination with prisoners (we are introduced to it when he sees a film about Folsm Prison), and second, what went wrong with June's marriages, so that we could see a little more about why she was reluctant to hook up with Johnny. Johnny's first wife, as well, gets the "icky wife who doesn't understand her man's true talent" treatment, and that's a serious flaw in the story, but unsurprising. Still, it's more than made up for by moments of grace that I could never have expected in a biopic, moments of quiet and stillness that you almost never see in this type of movie. The best one comes when Johnny meets June for the second time (the first is a little overwhelming for him), in a cafe, where they talk about her singing style, his lifelong love of her music, and his brother's death. Phoenix is heartbreaking (you can't help wondering if he's thinking about his own brother) when he tells her that he hasn't talked about it in so long he can't remember when he did, and Witherspoon is quietly wonderful as she elicits his story, never resorting to the standard reactions that one would expect here. It is at its heart a love story about two people who begin as friends, not really a biopic about an individual and his talent, and that may be why I liked it so much more than any others of recent memory. Just, you know, a love story about two people who made some really fantastic music.
That quality of a love story about two people who began as friends may be why Brokeback Mountain is one of the most beautiful and affecting movies I've seen in years. It's been a long time since I was as anxious to see a film as I was for this one, and an even longer time when some of my anticipation wasn't dimmed a little by having seen the final product. This didn't disappoint me in any way; in fact, it transcended any expectations I had going in.
I've read only bits and pieces of the story, but felt I knew it pretty well -- and certainly knew what was going to happen each step of the way. That didn't prepare me for the way the movie was made, though. This script is Larry McMurtry at his finest, I think -- that pinpoint sensitivity to the way people move and talk and exist in space, that understanding of how Westerners are without making apologies for them, and that kindness to characters who should be exasperating and enraging. And the movie as a whole is Ang Lee at his finest -- his ability to let silence stand on its own as a quality, to not fill up spaces with activity or music, to allow characters to grow and change even if they change in ways we may not like. They rightly focus on the fact that this is a love story. So many comments have been about this as the "gay cowboy" movie, something I find really dismissive and demeaning, but more importantly, calling it "gay" in the context of what we know now to be a gay movie misses the point of the story by miles.
Annie Proulx tends to write stories about outsiders. I don't mean those who are necessarily outsiders in the usual context (rebels without a cause, or whatever), but people who are outside normal boundaries in terms of their own emotional development. People who are stunted or lonely or wicked or any combination of less than perfect qualities she can muster. Ennis Del Mar is a perfect example of the outsider type she writes -- a man who is so far removed from his own emotions he just doesn't know how to even interact with other humans on their level. And neither McMurtry nor Ang feel the need to soften his harsh edges -- he stays an outsider to his own life throughout the movie, only finding a glimmer of light inside when he's with Jack. And he never learns how to keep that, or how much he ends up dimming Jack's own light, making Jack an outsider in his life, until it's too late.
I kept thinking of the line in a commentary that affected me so much, which I quoted here a few weeks ago: In the end, Brokeback Mountain is less the story of a love that dares not speak its name than of one that doesn't know how to speak its name, and is somehow more eloquent for its lack of vocabulary. And I think this is the essential quality so many people, both the backlashers who say this isn't a good "gay" movie and the people who think it's the best movie about gay people ever, are often missing. What this is, really, is a conventional story of thwarted, doomed love that can't be, made unconventional by the purity of its characters, their lack of guile and understanding and sophistication, and the setting that makes them outsiders in their own lives as well as those of the people around them (dangerously, frighteningly so in Ennis's case). It could be a Christian and a Jew in Nazi Germany, or a black man and a white woman in the South of the 1950s, or a Capulet and a Montague. It doesn't really matter because it's the story of love, friendship, loss, grief... a thousand different things, not just about it being a gay romance.
And that fact of friendship is what transcends each character's own sense of "not being a queer" and sustains them even as their relationship becomes less about passion and desire and more about familiarity and comfort. Jack understands Ennis in a way that no one ever has, or probably will -- partly because Jack is like him, a dirt-poor cowboy with little stake in his own future, and partly because Jack is a guy, and partly because Jack sees qualities in Ennis that no one is likely to have the patience to find. Stuck up there on the mountain with just each other for company allows Jack to see what's inside him, and through that friendship grows first passion and desire, then later, love. And I think the movie does an outstanding job of delineating the differences between that first flare of passion and desire, and the later quietly burning strength of love. Nothing ever ignites the fires in Ennis the way Jack, or talking or thinking about Jack, does, something that Alma realizes that first time she discovers that something is there inside her husband she has never been able to access.
What I think makes the movie seem revolutionary to some people is the fact of its simplicity, and the characters' own simplicity. The movie is quiet and open, just like its setting, it lets the landscape and personalities of Ennis and Jack, and the people they interact with, be the story in a way few films do these days. It has no agenda other than to say, you love who you love, and it shouldn't ever matter who you do love. (And I know there are people who wish it was waving the big rainbow flag, but that isn't what this is a story about, and would be wildly inappropriate for a story set in 1960s Wyoming.) That is of course also its great tragedy, because Ennis can't forget the memory of two men who did try to live that way and suffered for it, and Jack can't make him hope for a better world where they can just love each other. It isn't enough for Jack, and he slowly turns inward and away from Ennis in the saddest irony of the story.
On a personal level, I knew going in I was going to cry a lot. I made it through most of the movie, but two things really got to me: first when Ennis goes into Jack's room at his parents' ranch. The quiet emptiness, the way Ennis looks at and touches everything, got me worse than the shirts. Spaces have memories, carry traces of people in a way we don't often notice until we see them empty or changed, and Ennis has never had this part of Jack to connect to before, so being in that room with its silent testament to Jack's life was heartbreaking for me. But it was the last scene, with Ennis's agonizing "I swear, Jack" and the way he was with his daughter that really did me in. His earlier declaration that "if you can't fix a thing, Jack, you got to stand it" is one of the saddest statements I can remember anyone making in a film, and you realize as he looks at those shirts, that picture of Brokeback Mountain, that this is his fate now -- there is no fix for death, and he has to stand this for the rest of his lonely life. Ennis's entire life has merely been about endurance and existing, not living -- you know he is not the type to have done anything but fall into marriage with Alma because it was what she wanted and what he knew was expected, he moves to town when she tells him to, he holds down jobs in most basic sense because it's all he knows how to do. The only thing that takes away his outsiderness is Jack, and when that's gone, he has no hope of ever being inside something again. Which is why his decision to attend his daughter's wedding is so painful and sweet at the same time -- his first decision is to say no, to remain outside yet again. But then he changes his mind, does what maybe Jack has given him the understanding to do, and it's all the more heartbreaking because he is doing it alone.
A lot is being made of Heath Ledger's performance, and I have to say he's earned it, but I also thought Jake Gyllenhaal did superior work here, too. I've never been a fan of either actor, but Gyllenhaal's trick is a lot more subtle -- watching this guy who is a little more open to life, who may not have the vocabulary for what he feels, either, but who is honest enough to admit that he does feel, turn inward and grow increasingly angry and outside his own life, as if Ennis's bitterness is tainting his nature. I thought everyone in this was excellent, but I tend to expect that in Ang Lee movies. And I never once felt like I was watching straight actors cope with snogging with another guy; nothing felt forced or awkward -- at least, any more than it is for the two characters as they discover their feelings.
There are two standout scenes in the movie for me (and both of which made me really teary-eyed). The first is when Jack teasingly lassoes Ennis to bring him out of his funk after finding out they are coming down from the mountain, that this idyll is over, and then it erupts into a fight. This is all Ennis knows how to do in the face of losing the one good thing he's ever experienced and it sets the course for his later fits of temper and rage at not being able to have the life he needs. The second is toward the end when Jack's memory of Ennis embracing him before he takes off up the mountain haunts him as he watches Ennis drive away, the last time they will see each other, and they have fought again about their relationship. Jack is bitter and ground down, Ennis blames Jack for being what he is, and there's that little flash of a perfect time for them, when Jack had hope and Ennis wasn't defeated but sweet and tender. And it's utterly devastating, in my mind maybe even more so than when Ennis finds their shirts together in Jack's closet. Like the movie's tagline says, love is a force of nature, and one that neither of them can ever really get a handle on even after time and distance have given them more life experience.
If you're going to see Brokeback Mountain to see hot young actors macking or for a flag-flying gay pride celebration, this is definitely not the movie for you. But if you want to see a love story in all its messy, heartbreaking beauty, then this is definitely for you. It's sad and moving and character-driven and adult and intelligent, and those are the best gifts a movie can give you, if you ask me.
This is one of a handful of movies I was eagerly awaiting most of the year and knew I could not wait to see this once it arrived on DVD. It was every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be, maybe better in some ways because I've become very wary of the biopic in general, particularly the newly fashionable "blows the standard biopic away" hyperbole being leveraged onto a lot of recent product, particularly Ray last year. There seem to be two camps right now: the camp that believes Ray far outshines Walk as a better biopic, and the camp that believes the opposite. I'm in the latter camp. While I thought Ray was a fine movie in many respects, it bored me to exhaustion, especially in the chronicling of his middle years.
What I found much more appealing about Walk was the focus on a specific range of time, once we get the obligatory life as a child, suffering/torment, early adulthood move into music stuff out of the way (and in Walk, I found all that standard introductory material much more engaging than in Ray). Part of it may simply be that I find a story about a man's descent into drug addiction because it helps kill the pain of not being able to have the woman he loves somehow much more interesting and affecting than one of a guy who just loves to do drugs and womanize. I adore both musicians, but something about Johnny Cash, his conservative middle of the road Bible Belt Christian and hipster badass personas jumbled up together, just makes for a better story.
And Joaquin Phoenix is totally up to the task of portraying him in all this mixed-up glory. It was eerie at times to see how well he channeled all these aspects of Cash's personality, and he does a phenomenal job of imitating Cash's vocal style even though he can't match it exactly. This may also be why I'm in the Walk camp more than the Ray camp -- I've never been especially impressed with Jamie Foxx, and the fact that he does lip-synch in the movie, where Phoenix sings, affected my perspective pretty strongly. Reese Witherspoon surprised me with her take on June, and the rest of the cast is note-perfect throughout. The one person in the cast, though, who will probably be overlooked come awards time is Robert Patrick, and I think it's criminal that he's not getting more attention for this. When he and a drug-addled, pained Johnny stare each other down at a Thanksgiving dinner, they speak volumes of their hate and disappointment and regrets, and I was completely bowled over by his performance. He never stints on the hatefulness of Cash's dad, and yet somehow finds a core of humanity in him that almost shouldn't be there.
While it has the same surfing through someone's life quality that most biopics have, Walk doesn't stint on developing relationships with side characters, something that has grown tiresome for me. We usually get glancing blows of people Our Famous Subject has known; here, the movie takes its time in developing a picture of Cash on the road to fame with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the rest of his rock 'n' roll contemporaries -- and it makes it clear that Johnny Cash was not a "country" star, but a rock star. Another thing I felt strongly from this movie was that there was no apology for Cash's behavior. As much as I love Ray Charles's music, he's a pretty hard sell as a human being for me -- he cheats on his wife and treats all women like dirt, he's unrepentant about his drug abuse and the pain it inflicts on others, and he's not generally a likeable guy despite how he overcame adversity and all that. Walk the Line taps into what made Cash a genuinely interesting guy who was very likeable when he wasn't a drugged-out jerk, and who adored one woman so much it changed his life. I came away from Walk feeling for Johnny Cash, in a way I never did for Ray Charles from that movie. Ray is nearly hagiographical in its treatment of a guy that, despite oodles of talent, isn't always so great; Walk seems to get that you have show us everything and let us make up our minds.
I would have liked to know more about two things, and wish they could have incorporated more into the story: first, what drove his fascination with prisoners (we are introduced to it when he sees a film about Folsm Prison), and second, what went wrong with June's marriages, so that we could see a little more about why she was reluctant to hook up with Johnny. Johnny's first wife, as well, gets the "icky wife who doesn't understand her man's true talent" treatment, and that's a serious flaw in the story, but unsurprising. Still, it's more than made up for by moments of grace that I could never have expected in a biopic, moments of quiet and stillness that you almost never see in this type of movie. The best one comes when Johnny meets June for the second time (the first is a little overwhelming for him), in a cafe, where they talk about her singing style, his lifelong love of her music, and his brother's death. Phoenix is heartbreaking (you can't help wondering if he's thinking about his own brother) when he tells her that he hasn't talked about it in so long he can't remember when he did, and Witherspoon is quietly wonderful as she elicits his story, never resorting to the standard reactions that one would expect here. It is at its heart a love story about two people who begin as friends, not really a biopic about an individual and his talent, and that may be why I liked it so much more than any others of recent memory. Just, you know, a love story about two people who made some really fantastic music.
That quality of a love story about two people who began as friends may be why Brokeback Mountain is one of the most beautiful and affecting movies I've seen in years. It's been a long time since I was as anxious to see a film as I was for this one, and an even longer time when some of my anticipation wasn't dimmed a little by having seen the final product. This didn't disappoint me in any way; in fact, it transcended any expectations I had going in.
I've read only bits and pieces of the story, but felt I knew it pretty well -- and certainly knew what was going to happen each step of the way. That didn't prepare me for the way the movie was made, though. This script is Larry McMurtry at his finest, I think -- that pinpoint sensitivity to the way people move and talk and exist in space, that understanding of how Westerners are without making apologies for them, and that kindness to characters who should be exasperating and enraging. And the movie as a whole is Ang Lee at his finest -- his ability to let silence stand on its own as a quality, to not fill up spaces with activity or music, to allow characters to grow and change even if they change in ways we may not like. They rightly focus on the fact that this is a love story. So many comments have been about this as the "gay cowboy" movie, something I find really dismissive and demeaning, but more importantly, calling it "gay" in the context of what we know now to be a gay movie misses the point of the story by miles.
Annie Proulx tends to write stories about outsiders. I don't mean those who are necessarily outsiders in the usual context (rebels without a cause, or whatever), but people who are outside normal boundaries in terms of their own emotional development. People who are stunted or lonely or wicked or any combination of less than perfect qualities she can muster. Ennis Del Mar is a perfect example of the outsider type she writes -- a man who is so far removed from his own emotions he just doesn't know how to even interact with other humans on their level. And neither McMurtry nor Ang feel the need to soften his harsh edges -- he stays an outsider to his own life throughout the movie, only finding a glimmer of light inside when he's with Jack. And he never learns how to keep that, or how much he ends up dimming Jack's own light, making Jack an outsider in his life, until it's too late.
I kept thinking of the line in a commentary that affected me so much, which I quoted here a few weeks ago: In the end, Brokeback Mountain is less the story of a love that dares not speak its name than of one that doesn't know how to speak its name, and is somehow more eloquent for its lack of vocabulary. And I think this is the essential quality so many people, both the backlashers who say this isn't a good "gay" movie and the people who think it's the best movie about gay people ever, are often missing. What this is, really, is a conventional story of thwarted, doomed love that can't be, made unconventional by the purity of its characters, their lack of guile and understanding and sophistication, and the setting that makes them outsiders in their own lives as well as those of the people around them (dangerously, frighteningly so in Ennis's case). It could be a Christian and a Jew in Nazi Germany, or a black man and a white woman in the South of the 1950s, or a Capulet and a Montague. It doesn't really matter because it's the story of love, friendship, loss, grief... a thousand different things, not just about it being a gay romance.
And that fact of friendship is what transcends each character's own sense of "not being a queer" and sustains them even as their relationship becomes less about passion and desire and more about familiarity and comfort. Jack understands Ennis in a way that no one ever has, or probably will -- partly because Jack is like him, a dirt-poor cowboy with little stake in his own future, and partly because Jack is a guy, and partly because Jack sees qualities in Ennis that no one is likely to have the patience to find. Stuck up there on the mountain with just each other for company allows Jack to see what's inside him, and through that friendship grows first passion and desire, then later, love. And I think the movie does an outstanding job of delineating the differences between that first flare of passion and desire, and the later quietly burning strength of love. Nothing ever ignites the fires in Ennis the way Jack, or talking or thinking about Jack, does, something that Alma realizes that first time she discovers that something is there inside her husband she has never been able to access.
What I think makes the movie seem revolutionary to some people is the fact of its simplicity, and the characters' own simplicity. The movie is quiet and open, just like its setting, it lets the landscape and personalities of Ennis and Jack, and the people they interact with, be the story in a way few films do these days. It has no agenda other than to say, you love who you love, and it shouldn't ever matter who you do love. (And I know there are people who wish it was waving the big rainbow flag, but that isn't what this is a story about, and would be wildly inappropriate for a story set in 1960s Wyoming.) That is of course also its great tragedy, because Ennis can't forget the memory of two men who did try to live that way and suffered for it, and Jack can't make him hope for a better world where they can just love each other. It isn't enough for Jack, and he slowly turns inward and away from Ennis in the saddest irony of the story.
On a personal level, I knew going in I was going to cry a lot. I made it through most of the movie, but two things really got to me: first when Ennis goes into Jack's room at his parents' ranch. The quiet emptiness, the way Ennis looks at and touches everything, got me worse than the shirts. Spaces have memories, carry traces of people in a way we don't often notice until we see them empty or changed, and Ennis has never had this part of Jack to connect to before, so being in that room with its silent testament to Jack's life was heartbreaking for me. But it was the last scene, with Ennis's agonizing "I swear, Jack" and the way he was with his daughter that really did me in. His earlier declaration that "if you can't fix a thing, Jack, you got to stand it" is one of the saddest statements I can remember anyone making in a film, and you realize as he looks at those shirts, that picture of Brokeback Mountain, that this is his fate now -- there is no fix for death, and he has to stand this for the rest of his lonely life. Ennis's entire life has merely been about endurance and existing, not living -- you know he is not the type to have done anything but fall into marriage with Alma because it was what she wanted and what he knew was expected, he moves to town when she tells him to, he holds down jobs in most basic sense because it's all he knows how to do. The only thing that takes away his outsiderness is Jack, and when that's gone, he has no hope of ever being inside something again. Which is why his decision to attend his daughter's wedding is so painful and sweet at the same time -- his first decision is to say no, to remain outside yet again. But then he changes his mind, does what maybe Jack has given him the understanding to do, and it's all the more heartbreaking because he is doing it alone.
A lot is being made of Heath Ledger's performance, and I have to say he's earned it, but I also thought Jake Gyllenhaal did superior work here, too. I've never been a fan of either actor, but Gyllenhaal's trick is a lot more subtle -- watching this guy who is a little more open to life, who may not have the vocabulary for what he feels, either, but who is honest enough to admit that he does feel, turn inward and grow increasingly angry and outside his own life, as if Ennis's bitterness is tainting his nature. I thought everyone in this was excellent, but I tend to expect that in Ang Lee movies. And I never once felt like I was watching straight actors cope with snogging with another guy; nothing felt forced or awkward -- at least, any more than it is for the two characters as they discover their feelings.
There are two standout scenes in the movie for me (and both of which made me really teary-eyed). The first is when Jack teasingly lassoes Ennis to bring him out of his funk after finding out they are coming down from the mountain, that this idyll is over, and then it erupts into a fight. This is all Ennis knows how to do in the face of losing the one good thing he's ever experienced and it sets the course for his later fits of temper and rage at not being able to have the life he needs. The second is toward the end when Jack's memory of Ennis embracing him before he takes off up the mountain haunts him as he watches Ennis drive away, the last time they will see each other, and they have fought again about their relationship. Jack is bitter and ground down, Ennis blames Jack for being what he is, and there's that little flash of a perfect time for them, when Jack had hope and Ennis wasn't defeated but sweet and tender. And it's utterly devastating, in my mind maybe even more so than when Ennis finds their shirts together in Jack's closet. Like the movie's tagline says, love is a force of nature, and one that neither of them can ever really get a handle on even after time and distance have given them more life experience.
If you're going to see Brokeback Mountain to see hot young actors macking or for a flag-flying gay pride celebration, this is definitely not the movie for you. But if you want to see a love story in all its messy, heartbreaking beauty, then this is definitely for you. It's sad and moving and character-driven and adult and intelligent, and those are the best gifts a movie can give you, if you ask me.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-19 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-19 08:58 pm (UTC)I was impressed that two non-musicians could be so comfortable with their musical performances that they could pull off the vocals and acting. The way they looked at each other over the microphone with such longing! No wonder his wife thought something was going on.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-19 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-20 12:18 am (UTC)Well said. Personally, I'm glad I realized that about the story and film before I went on some flag-waving rampage.
I was first aware of the film when some rag posted pictures of Heath and Jake jumping nude into the river, and I didn't think much of it other than that it might be interesting. Then when I started to hear more about it, I was excited to see the pretty cowboys-in-love movie. And then I found out somewhere that one of the cowboys dies, and that they are never together. That made me more interested in what the story was really about, not about slashing characters or seeing a couple of guys make out. I started the hunt for info, and when I realized what the project was really like, my excitement for it changed into a different kind.
But then he changes his mind, does what maybe Jack has given him the understanding to do, and it's all the more heartbreaking because he is doing it alone.
I hadn't thought about that scene while considering Jack's effect on Ennis. Thank you for that insight.
that this is his fate now -- there is no fix for death, and he has to stand this for the rest of his lonely life
It's definitely heart-breaking, but I feel that there's some measure of hope in that scene, especially after reading the book--because the present-day Ennis feels a sense of contentment and joy at having Jack in his dreams, not misery. So while they are not together and, of course, he misses him with chest-clutching agony, those shirts are representative of him and Jack, and they are together in a way that he and Jack could never be. He asked Jack to leave him be, and he got what he wished for...but Jack's death also took away the option of them having to live apart because of fear of bigotry. Those shirts are together in a way that no one can touch.
I don't know if I'm making any sense. I'm with you 100% on your review, though. Thank you for posting it.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-20 12:57 am (UTC)I want to see it again, just to be able to remember some of it better. On the other hand, I don't think I'm really ready or able to see it again just yet.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-20 01:37 am (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2005-12-20 01:39 am (UTC)And I've had Johnny Cash in my car stereo for weeks now, and often it's just one song over and over: his and Joe Strummer's version of "Redemption Song." ::passes out::
Also: ::hugs::
no subject
Date: 2005-12-20 02:55 am (UTC)But at any rate, I totally agree with your commentary on WtL, especially Robert Patrick's performance. That T-day scene. Shivver.
And the cafe scene. Forgetting for a moment the unbearable hotness of JP with brown eyes, that split second where Johnny goes from nervously liking June to having fallen in love with her ... that shift in the eyes, the gaze.
Now *that's* acting.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-20 07:51 am (UTC)I'm still haunted by Brokeback Mountain. A gorgeous, heartbreaking film.
J & I saw Syriana today. Very interesting, disturbing, and complex. I liked it, though I'm not sure "liked" is the right word for this kind of movie. Great cast, great performances, IMO.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-23 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-16 10:07 pm (UTC)