Brokeback Mountain

There's so much to love about this film. First off, the landscape is captured beautifully. The majesty of nature is one reason we'll never lose the theatrical experience for movies. Seeing this film definitely made me long for the time I spent in Montana & Idaho. For all this film is to so many, for me, it's a film about contrasting attitudes and approaches to life. Jack wants to feel his life, be himself, have courage and boldness toward life, take chances. Ennis was traumatized by his father as a child and lived the rest of his life in fear and denial, never knowing what to do with his emotions and needs.

It's almost amazing to me that the Oscars so often get it right. It's such a political game that films, particularly indies, hire year-round Oscar consultants. We are a busy nation, a busy world, and most of us have only enough attention to pay to a few big winners. There are millions of incredible athletes out there we'll never know about because they don't have a gold medal and thousands of great films we'll never discover. So, producers will do almost anything to break the waves. The Brokeback Mountain screenplay, written by the revered best-selling western author Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, was known for many years in Hollywood as the best screenplay never made.

Producers were as afraid of homosexuality as Ennis was. McMurtry said when he read Annie Proulx's short story in the New Yorker, his first reaction was that he wished he'd written it. How had he missed such an obvious facet of the west when he'd written about it all his life? I mean, guys up on mountains alone for months.... But, more than that, I think this is a story a lot of authors missed because it's a twist (pun intended) on a classic fable. The progeny of Romeo & Juliet and West Side Story show young lovers willing to face a small-minded, prejudiced family and society... together. It's the kids against the parents, so to speak.

This is the classic fable modernized, we're now ready to see what it looks like when there's only one real protagonist and he has to, essentially, fight not only a culture frightened of its sexuality, or anything different, but his lover, who embodies more buckling than bravery. This makes Jack all the more courageous and ahead of his time, or maybe it just shows his desperation or naivete. Jack has a focus and desire to be himself that guides his life and will not be silenced. Like Gwen Aruja, the transsexual killed several years ago, he insisted on authenticity and paid for it with his life. They are martyrs, they brought awareness and change, and emboldened others. They're heroes.

It's funny cause even though we're all waiting for the big sex scene, when it comes, it's both shocking and natural at the same time. Man, that's a lot of testosterone. No wonder people find lesbians easier to swallow. I must say, this is one film that, watching it on the small screen, I really longed for a bigger one. When it comes to Heath and Jake romping in the Rockies, bigger is better, and much bigger is much better. Let's get some IMAX in here.

But, I digress. Here's why I think this is a great story, I said it up top, it shows the contrast between a brave man and a coward. Yeah, the bold one gets his face bashed in and the scared little mouse faces his small unlived life for many years, but, who do you sympathize with here? Who do you admire? Jack loved. He lived his life, rode horses he loved and wanted to live his life with a man he loved. He loved Ennis. I totally related to him when he said the line that's already become a cliche, "I wish I could quit you". I've been there, loving someone I wish I didn't. But there's satisfaction in knowing that you are living your life in a full, deep and feeling way and that you can be honest about it.

Someone said to me once that in the end, it's all about the love we felt. Jack was able to feel love. Was Ennis? What did love feel like to Ennis? Did he, in fact, love Jack Twist? In many ways, that's the intriguing "twist" to this film. When we look at Jack, it's clear, he has a certain integrity, despite living, basically, a lie with his wife. Ennis is cloudy. We never know quite who he is or how he feels. Something got turned off, way down, way deep, very early and I get the feeling no one will ever really know Ennis, including himself. Who is this guy? What does his life stand for? What does his life mean? He is just existing. He doesn't want awareness. His life is a process of shutting down.

He loves his daughter and, through knowing Jack, he musters up enough love for her to show up at her wedding, or at least promises to. Now we clap and that endless guitar loop comes up bigger than ever. Ennis smiles at his daughter and agrees to go to her wedding. Wow, what growth. I think of characters like Celie in Color Purple, or even many of the characters in Crash. Maybe Annie Proulx should have thought of that before making all those tacky comments about Crash. I think if anything shortcuts the film, it's the story and character development. We see the emotion come out of Ennis as, literally, retching. So, it's a realistic ending for such a sad, empty man, but, I guess we expect more out of our big Hollywood movies these days.

JJ's Blues 5

JJ's Blues 5
Originally uploaded by Intervisions.

Tebo & I whipped it up.. my first time performing with a Grammy nominated artist.

JJ's Blues 4

JJ's Blues 4
Originally uploaded by Intervisions.

Kam & I having fun.

Hustle and Flow

If you liked Walk the Line and Memphis music, this is a great companion. Here we are in modern, if you call cassette tapes modern, Memphis as we watch a fabulous performance by Terrence Howard depicting a hustler on the lowest rungs of the city. He sells whatever he can: his women, his pride, weed. He's a promoter with the chutzpah of Bill Graham, Steve Jobs & Bill Gates, just with none of the other skills they possess. All he's got is raw drive and raw emotion and when he puts it into a rap, a producer friend layers the track and they go about promoting the song. The song didn't do bad. 3-6 Mafia won an Oscar for it, the first Oscar to ever go to rappers.

While watching this film I thought of lots of things I wish I'd included in my review of Walk the Line. It's about the comments of the director that, although Johnny only spent one night in jail, he wrote about prison extensively, recorded a live album at Folsom and many people think he did do hard time. But what Johnny wrote about are the prisons of our own mind. He was himself tortured by the ghost of his brother who was killed under mysterious circumstances as a child and Johnny suffered from the loss all his life. He had been very close to his brother.

But Johnny recognized all types of mental prisons and I definitely saw them at play in this film. I have known people who lived in the same type of mental prison DJ lives in. The small time hustler, always looking for some little one-up but never really understanding what is needed to make fundamental change that would alter their social status or milieu or the deeper aspects of their personality and soul.

But, the prisons small-time hustlers and tortured artists live in are not really that different from the prisons the unfulfilled housewives and workaholics live in. When I'm in book group, I always hear the women commenting on the trapped, unhappy lives of the fictional protagonists. All the while I look at these women and the walls that bind their own minds and hearts, walls they do not see. I talk to powerful businessmen who are filled with self-importance who never seem to see their lack of heart or courage or creativity or openness. I see people in prison everywhere I look. I used to live in one myself, and probably still do, in ways I don't see. Though at least I talk to people who can, and do, point out my blind spots to me.

We look into our real prisons and see a lot of guys like DJ, born into poverty they'll probably never rise above. But, DJ does try to raise himself and he does accomplish something meaningful, creative, expressive and real. I don't see people for the place they inhabit, I look at them for the distance they've travelled. I look to the efforts they have made to love, to extend themselves, to grow, to change. I look for people who are self-aware, who value self-knowledge, who can talk intelligently about their emotions, responses, childhood, family and who show an understanding of how their life experience has shaped them but moreover, who have shaped their life experiences.

I look for masters of their own destiny, who understand that they are the directors of the film of their life, and that their life is supposed to stand for something, something more than making money and using stuff. DJ, low-life that he is, shows growth, shows some love, some creativity, he's real. He's an unseen, unwanted part of our society but has meaning and redemption in his own life, so who are we to judge?

The commentary track adds a lot and I really enjoyed the film itself, particularly watching how they made the tape. 3-6 Mafia is a platinum selling rap group and represent a lot of what is going on in the south today musically. In many places, music and basketball are the only roads out and there is a lot of hip hop production in almost every city but the south has the best crunk as far as I'm concerned. I happen to love Outkast and the Atlanta scene, but each city has good solid layered tracks which are rich with sound. So check out this DVD.