The first thing that must be said about this movie is that it should not work. It's a prequel to one of the most mind-blowing, groundbreaking, and just plain revolutionary action movies of the 21st century—and prequels are a bad idea in most cases, but all the more so when the character they revolve around has already given you their entire backstory in their original introduction, which is also the final, culminating act of their character arc. (To put it another way, if you had asked me, nine years ago, which character I thought offered more fertile ground for prequel storytelling, Imperator Furiosa or Han Solo, I would have picked Han without a moment's hesitation, and I don't even like Han that much.) And it's a follow-up to a movie whose chief virtue lies in its conciseness—in being a single, drawn-out, pulse-pounding, increasingly deranged car chase. Which means you can either try to repeat that accomplishment, which will inevitably feel a bit old hat; or you can
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As for is it a GOOD thing to have "Postive gays" on the tellie, or a black history month, or a Palastenian outlook on the war of 1948 in Israeli history text-books, well, this is where things tend oi get blurry. Like gay friends of mine who feel that "Queer as folks" is anything BUT a portarait of their lives and problems.
So yeah, I'd rather have the media saying how brave it is then NOT talking about it.
Cheers from Columbia MD
Hagay
Let's not forget, also, that Gylenhaal and Ledger are getting a lot more exposure from this film than they would have done from a heterosexual romantic drama. Neither one of them have made it into the big leagues. Ledger has had a string of flops since 2001's A Knight's Tale (and raise your hand if you think his upcoming Casanova isn't going on that list), and despite doing some well-received work on the indy circuit, Gylenhaal's sole attempt to make a Tobey Maguire-ish transition to Hollywood stardom, last year's The Day After Tomorrow, fell flat on its face. One slightly controversial casting choice later, Ledger has a Golden Globe nomination, they're both being plastered on magazine covers, interviewed by everyone in sight, and being called 'brave' for making a savvy career move.
And I have to say, I disagree with your description of making Brokeback Mountain as even 'slightly brave'. Brave is being openly gay in the period and location that the story describes. Brave is coming out to your conservative, red-state parents. Brave is going to a gay bar the day after Matthew Shepard got beaten to death. What Annie Proulx, and The New Yorker, and Ang Lee, and Paramount Pictures have done is admirable, but a far cry from anything like bravery.
What are we disagreeing about here?:)
Hagay: Gays are people
Abgile: Right
Hagay: As people, fiction should reflect them like any other group of people (Indian fiction, Jewish fiction, Swedish fiction etc)
Abgile: Right, as long as it's good.
Hagay: Sure, as long as it's good. Anyway, Break Back mountain deals with gay action amoung cowboys, which is totaly cool, since not all gays are urban and totaly gay. In fact, many people who are gay have a straight relationship/orientation as well...ergo, a movie about people who are "sometime" gay is a good thing because it goes against our perception of gay-ness.
Abagile: NO! These guys should have lived openly as gay people in the west. THAT would have been ultra brave. But to have a gay fling once in a while while having wife and kiddies - unbrave!
Hagay: Huh?
Abagile: YES! I will proudly moraly gudge fictional characters according to MY standard of what is TRULY gay or not!
Hagay: Um..well, have you seen the movie or...
Abagile: Don't need to see it, nothing brave about it!
See what I mean!:)
Cheers and see you soon:
Hagay
Baltimore
Abigail: To say that two Hollywood studs playing gay men in 2005 is brave is to devalue both the concept of bravery and the fact of being homosexual.
Hagay: But making a film that treats homosexuality positively is a good thing and therefore brave.
Abigail: I disagree with your equation of 'good' and 'brave', but anyway you're talking about the filmmakers and I'm talking about the actors.
Hagay: Hey! Abigail thinks all gay men should have lived openly in 1960s Wyoming!
That last one, by the way, is totally out of line. I called living openly as gay men in Wyoming brave, yes, but it shouldn't follow that I thought the characters should have done this. 'Brave' isn't a moral distinction, nor is it an intellectual distinction. To be brave, you have to do something in spite of being afraid to do it, but it doesn't follow that the thing you've chosen to do is either the right thing or the smart thing. I really don't see how you made the jump from point A to point B (although it seems that at some point you assumed that the conversation had stopped being about the actors - indeed, had you ever started talking about them? - and started being about the characters).
So, for the final time, I'm talking about the actors and the fact that the Hollywood press is all over them as if they'd single-handedly taken out out a department store full of terrorists simply for doing their jobs and helping their careers in the process. You insist on turning this into a discussion about whether or not it's a good thing to depict gays positively in mainstream media, and I've made my point about this clear (or, at least, I thought I had) - of course it's a good thing. It simply isn't brave.
By the way, you can read the English test of Proulx's story (which is, I agree, quite superb) here at The New Yorker.
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