What a profoundly sad, beautifully filmed and acted film.

Heath Ledger really gave an awesome performance (his part was less words as to how he played his emotions on his face and demeanor). Jake Gillynhaal was wonderful and the actress that played Heath Ledger's wife too. I don't know her name here though.

I wish I could write up more on it but I totally suck on writing up my thoughts on films.

I can easily say, "it's one of the best films out now". I would truly deserve any Oscars it can possibly get. It's worth seeing.

In this film, everyone loses.

Mando

Ang Lee is a brilliant director.

When I saw the preview, I was turned off - it seemed like a cheap attempt to exploit the racy notion of gay cowboys. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anybody refers to this as "the gay cowboy movie" you'll know they either haven't seen it yet, or they missed the point.

I was astounded at Heath Ledger's work here. I'd seen him in a couple of things and been thoroughly unimpressed, but he brilliantly captures a man's soul-destroying efforts to deny himself and escape vulnerability at every level. He's spoken in interviews about getting Ennis' voice right, "Turn my mouth, my face around so it's clenched like a fist and the words have to punch their way out." - and I'll say his voice in this role was the key to everything for me. Heartbreaking. The dialogue is spare, and that completely works here because the characters are so beautifully observed, and perfectly eloquent in their bodies.

Roger Ebert writes about this movie, "The more specific a film is, the more universal, because the more it understands individual characters, the more it applies to everyone. I can imagine someone weeping at this film, identifying with it, because he always wanted to stay in the Marines, or be an artist or a cabinetmaker."

Yep.

I saw it, and I agree that it was very sensitively handled and beautifully acted. I believe that Heath Ledger is going to win the Oscar for his performance.

I thought it was a really great movie.

The short story is the best thing I've read by Annie Proulx - spare, haunting, bleak and as beautiful as that Montana landscape. I will be fascinated to find out how such a short tale transfers cinematically - and what Larry McMurtry has done to flesh out the narrative.

I've heard so much about it, and now I would really like to see it. It isn't shown in this small town of mine - neither in any of the bigger neighbor towns. I'll have to wait till I can get it on DVD. At that time I've probably forgotten all about it.

My life in a nutshell..

this one was filmed in the Calgary area and we supplied metal for the prop guys! Aren't the foothills beautiful!

My son tells me the script was based on a South Park episode. Is that possible? It seems incredible.

There was a South Park episode that parodied the Sundance Film Festival and had, as one of the entrants, a move about "gay cowboys eating pudding". But I don't think Proulx was inspired by a South Park episode. But ya never know . . . ;)

I highly doubt the story and the movie being inspired by South Park. Yet another thing said about what is truly a good meaningful movie.

The story pre-dated South Park.

It's a curious rumor. The South Park episode aired in 1998. Of course there's no connection between Cartman's prophecy and the reality of a good movie, but South Park does have an eerie knack of feeling the cultural pulse, in its own rowdy way.

The story appeared in the New Yorker in 1997. My guess is that the South Park writers were inspired by the story.

Not according to interviews with them. They describe watching trends at Sundance. Clearly they have no supernatural gift for predicting dessert fashions. They really don't seem like the kind of guys who read the New Yorker.

Maybe it was just one of those ideas whose time has come. Wasn't one of the Village People costumed as a cowboy? And that was much earlier than either the story or the South Park episode.

Exactly. The zeitgeist.

Back to the thread topic, though, it is such a relief to see an actual love story in the popular mainstream. It has been a long, dry time for movies of human tenderness. I hope this isn't an anomaly, but the beginning of a rediscovery of the heart.

I will be seeing it tonight. I can't wait.

Tried twice but the lines have been wrapped around the block...maybe this weekend will be the charm.

I have been wanting to see it too but I live in Podunk so they won't show it around here. Closest theater to have it is in Chicago. I think it's worth the trip to see it though so maybe I'll head that way on Sunday.

I saw it last night. Heath Ledger was phenomenal in the ways he inhabited that laconic role with such austere beauty. The film itself is exzceptional - it's left me melancholy and slightly despairing, but also overwhelmed at the beauty of love wherever we may stumble upon it. The image of the two shirts will certainly haunt my imagination.

A masterpiece, as trite as that sounds, is what this film is.

To say this film is haunting me is an understatement and currently it's ineffable as to why. See it!

I saw it Friday night. Melancholic is the perfect word to describe its effect on me. I still find myself thinking about it and them. The final image of the two shirts and the postcard image of the mountain was bittersweet.

Not released here yet, but when it is (Jan 26th) I will have moved to my new home and will FINALLY be living within coo-ee of a cinema (within coo-ee meaning not having to drive 2 hours to get to one, only 20 minutes! How cool is THAT!). I will be able to go see it any darn time I want to!

I have heard nothing but praise for the movie. I love Annie Proulx's work, along with that of Ang Lee and Larry McMurty so am very excited.

Welcome back to civilization, Janie!

Thanks! Although I have spent the last week at Noosa which is delightfully civilised. Cafes, restaurants, water views, cinemas ... we had a super time! I'm currently back at Quambone cleaning and packing for the big move. Hot as hades and dry as billy-oh.

Anyway, sorry for the hijack!

Still looking forward to Brokeback Mountain.
: )

You're too cute, Janie. you have me laughing here. Glad to hear you'll be near things to do again too.

Mando;-)

JANIE! Where are you shifting to? Noosa? A Queenslander? Or are you shifting from the property towards the NSW coast?

I'm off to TAMWORTH, the country music capital of Australia. Sort of a smaller, less important, hotter and drier Nashville. : )

I have picked up a new school over there - slightly bigger, more staff, closer to services. I won't have to drive 180km round trip for a hair cut any more!

Just this afternoon, heard an interview with the story's author on the radio; she stated that she was completely floored by Heath Ledger's performance, in that he came through with things that even she hadn't known. The film and story sound so great; I really am going to insist that we go see it, and I need to read it too.

It is set in Wyoming though, right Leopoldo?

Sorry to get off subject, but I'm thrilled to hear this for you Janie. I've never been to Tamworth, but of course it is a household name around Australia as our country music capital. Enjoy the new job. (Well, we're still talking 'country' and a place where cowboy dress is common).

Thanks Jicky - I just have to get everything sorted out then I will feel alot better about moving. I am culling culling culling right now. Loads of stuff - off to the dump.

Good luck to janie!

Joules, yes, it's set in Wyoming (and partly in Texas) though I beleive it was filmed in Canada near Calgary.

The short story is, to my mind, one of the best short stories I've ever read - so powerful and poignant. It's when Proulx was at her best - every word and nuance matters and each page is infused with a movingly rich but always simple symbolism. It chokes me (I've learnt to live with being the sentimental kind) and the film went on to emphasise those same feelings.

You've got me turning back to the story now - the last paragraph is profoundly moving if you know how the story got to it (and reveals nothing if you don't):

"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it."

As a lovely lady I know wrote:

It's strange. I couldn't sleep last night, for ages, and this morning feel pretty wasted, emotionally. I can't remember the last film I saw that had such a powerful effect.

Need some more processing time.

Though I can say now how superb I thought the script was. Really, really inspiring. There were several moments when the skilful economy of the writing pretty much took my breath away - I thought, Christ, with about ten words you've told a whole story, sketched in background, character... beautiful.

"You could argue that the film 'fails' by not being universal enough, I guess. Maybe it works for gay men because it's a love story,"

Surely it works for anyone because it's a love story?
And, as far as relating personal experience to the film goes, we both found aspects of it that resonated powerfully and sometimes painfully with each of us, for different reasons, ones that had nothing to do with sexuality.

mmm, anyway, should shut up, my thoughts are all still a but of a mess, and am starting to get a bit teary, which isn't good at my desk!

I quite liked it. It's really more a film about lives half lived in order to conform and how it all unravels anyway and the collateral damage to those who are pulled in to the duplicity and the pain it causes them...rather than a 'gay' film.

I thought it was handled in a way that just basically tells the poignant story of the two men. It doesn't shove anything down your throat and "tell you how to feel about it" as some films can do with this type of subject matter. It just lays it out and let's the viewer draw their own conclusions.

I am really, really surprised by the contempt prior to investigation around this movie. So many people are up in arms about that have not even bothered to view. That kind of ignorance just makes me want to scream. Even women who are not generally homophobic have said to me, "I would never see that. It's shoving homosexuality at us." I find that so bizarre. It's a movie about fear and conformity and deceipt and ambivalence...not actually about being gay. The two lovers could have just as easily been hetero and different races or differenct socio-economic classes and the story could have been very much the same. I applaud Ang Lee for making this type of love story involving a homosexual love. People really need to get over their completely TIRED assumptions and aversions to it. Enough, already!!!

Now I REALLY want to see it!

You said it all Sharilstuff. Though that response hasn't happened here in the UK too much(though that is also a different thing from saying 'there's no homophobia here'!)

This is certainly one for the ages!

I'll agree with Sharil about "lives half lived".

I've seen it twice ..had to see it with DH and with "the girls".

It's about so much more than the fact that the two main characters are homosexual. Anyone chalking this to being "a gay movie" out to see it again.

My question is: will I have to bring a box of tissues with me when I see it? (I'm a bawler...I'd rather be forewarned)

You will need the tissues; but I'd say more afterwards (it lingers in one's imagination) than during. However, I saw it a second time yesterday and I had tears in my eyes from the get go. But I am a big ole softy.