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Monday, February 28, 2011

An Oscar Night To Remember

Five years ago, on March 5, 2006, the 78th Academy Awards were held in the Kodak Theater, in Los Angeles, California. The favorite for Best Picture was nominated for 8 Oscars that evening. It was an independent film that the world had grown to call a "gay cowboy movie". The strange thing about it was, it didn't have one gay character in it.


The story is about two men, Ennis del Mar, played by Heath Ledger, and Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. They're hired to herd sheep during the summer of 1963 on Brokeback Mountain, in Wyoming. Over the summer, they fall in love. It's a love that lasts for twenty years.


During the span of those two decades, the men get married: Ennis to his long time fiancée, and Jack to a rodeo barrel racer he meets and falls in love with. Things change over the years for both men. Both couples have children. Jack and his wife teeter back and forth on the edge of divorce. Jack has an affair here and there with another woman. Throughout the years, two things remain constant: Jack and Ennis' affection for each other, and their regular "fishing trips" to Brokeback Mountain.


I won't give away any more of the plot or the story, just in case you haven't seen the movie.


The reception for the movie amongst the gay community was phenomenal.  Unfortunately, everyone seemed to forget that Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway played Ennis' and Jake's wives in the film.  Everyone called it a "gay romance", a "gay love story", (god, I hate this term) "that gay cowboy movie".


Regrettably, not one review of the film called it what it was, a bisexual love story.  Worse yet, at the time the movie came out, I can only find one article defending the movie as a bisexual picture (thank you Wikipedia).  It was an opinion piece by Amy Andre on December 16, 2005.  It was published on the National Sexuality Resource Center's site, nsrc.sfsu.edu, under the title "Opinion: Bisexual Cowboys In Love".  The opening paragraph made the most direct and passionate defenses of the movie to date:
"Brokeback Mountain is not a movie about gay people, and there are no gay people in it. There. I said it. Despite what you may have read in the many reviews that have come out about this new cowboy feature film, Brokeback Mountain is a bisexual picture. Why can't film reviewers say the word “bisexual” when they see lead characters with sexual and romantic relationships with both men and women?  I am unaware of a single review of Brokeback calling the leads what they are–a sad statement on the invisibility of bisexual experience and the level of biphobia in both the mainstream and gay media."
Other mainstream writers, although not using the term "bisexual", also acknowledged that this was not a "gay"movie.  In late 2009, Entertainment Weekly published an issued titled, "THE 100 Greatest MOVIES, TV SHOWS, ALBUMS, BOOKS, CHARACTERS, SCENES, EPISODES, SONGS, DRESSES, MUSIC VIDEOS, AND TRENDS THAT ENTERTAINED US OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS".  Sadly, I can't find where 'Brokeback' ranked in the top 100 list, but in describing the film, the magazine said:
 "Everyone called it "The Gay Cowboy Movie." Until they saw it. In the end, Ang Lee's 2005 love story wasn't gay or straight, just human."
Well said.


On Oscar night, 'Brokeback' won three of the eight Academy awards it was nominated for.  Ang Lee won Best Director.  The film also won for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.  Ledger, Gyllenhaal, and Michelle Williams were all nominated for their acting roles, but lost.  The movie itself, surprising lost to the underdog 'Crash'.


If you haven't seen this movie, do what you can to see it.  It is one of the most real and heart wrenching love stories you'll ever see.  I am embarrassed to say that I didn't see it myself until within the last few months, and now I kick myself for not seeing it sooner.  This is a story of true love.  This movie had nothing to do with sex or with lust.  It's a story of a lifelong bond between two bisexual men that I, for one, will never forget.

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