I saw it last night (yes it's heartbreaking and haunting), with an all gay audience at a tiny theater in Washington's Dupont Circle, the only venue in town where it's showing.
Here's a reluctantly positive review, at least about the quality of the movie (with plenty of disclaimers about its morality), from Christianity Today. Catch the discussion questions at the end.
Still, that review is more supportive than this dismissive and petty one in the Washington Post, which labels the movie "a potential camp classic, larded with unintended humor" and a set-up for Saturday Night Live parodies. Here we see the typical straight response-and why, sadly, the movie won't attract a mainstream audience despite the truckload of awards it will win.
Another example, from Mickey Kaus over at Kausfiles, here ("I don't want to go see it. (Why? Sexual orientation really is in the genes. Sorry") and here ("If a gay man, say, goes to see 'Wuthering Heights,' there is at least one romantic lead of the sex he's interested in! In 'Brokeback Mountain,' neither of the two romantic leads is of a sex I'm interested in."). That about sums it up.
More: The New York Times' always mean-spirited
Maureen Dowd, an oh-so smug liberal Bush-hater, penned a Saturday
column (not available gratis online) that says:
Maybe it's time to take another look at that sway in John Wayne's stride. Everything will have to be re-evaluated "High Plains Drifter" now sounds like a guy who might get arrested in a bus station bathroom. And audiences may be ready for "The Good, the Bad and the Bad Hair Day."
She then goes into an attack against Republicans and the
frontier myth, and concludes by returning to Hollywood and
gays:
"King Kong is not as daring as it could be. Peter Jackson...could have made "Brokeback Island." Just picture it: Leonardo DiCaprio, blond, doe-eyed and smitten, curled in the ape's epicene yet hairy grip. Kong, swinging both ways."
Scratch a liberal, find a phobe.
Still more: Here's a tonic to some of the
above-quoted poisoned pens, a Times' piece on what it's like for
real gay cowboys, who affirm the film's truth. Writes Guy
Trebay:
The light Ang Lee allows into the bunkhouse closet may shock those who like their Marlboro Men straight. But to gay men trying to forge lives in a world where the shape of masculinity is narrow, and where the "liberated" antics of the homosexual minstrels so often depicted on television can seem far off, the emotional privation and brutal violence of "Brokeback Mountain" seems like documentary.
Take that, MoDo.
Yet more still: Comments reader Another
Jim:
When bush-haters Maureen Dowd and (as Steve recently posted) Al Franken let down their guard, out comes the sneering contempt toward gays.
I think these people are just haters of anyone who's not like them, and they've found it's profitable to unleash their hatred toward George Bush and conservatives. But their hearts are very dark.
Let's just say they're not nice people, despite their smug
liberalism.