Saw “Brokeback” this weekend. Excellent, if a bit languidly paced.
For those of you who are squeamish, there’s actually more nudity in the hetro sex scenes than the gay sex scenes (although there’s a couple gay make-out scenes). If you’re really squeamish, just remember to go for pop-corn whenever Ennis goes into Jack’s tent.
But seriously, it’s really more of a gay “Romeo and Juliet” than a “gay cowboy” movie. It’s really about lovers separated by society’s prejudices—I could easily imagine the basic plot being translated into an interracial hetro affair in the Jim Crow South, or a German/Jewish hetro affair in Nazi Germany.
And while the subject matter is obviously different, I think it’s a movie that one can use to communicate some of the pain that comes from being in the closet about crossdressing. Jack and Ennis are in the throes of urges they don’t really understand and can barely articulate. But they do feel that it’s something they absolutely can’t let anyone know about. And hiding that part of themselves eats away at all involved.
