Brokeback Mountain

[winter]

I know it's late, but in this backwater, Brokeback Mountain just premiered yesterday.

I think this movie can be summed up by three sentences: Wyoming is pretty. Jack is pretty. Ennis is dumb.

I can't point to any particular scenes or points that clenched it for me, but I liked it. There's a timelessness to it that makes it a story of star-crossed lovers, period, not particularly tied to any period of time or space except maybe the macho mythos of men-don't-cry and extrapolating from that, men-don't-have-any-emotions-except-anger (see: Men Are Dumb). It felt soft and quiet and real, and I walked out of the cinema with a sad smile.

(Also: this is the director of Hulk and the star of A Knight's Tale. Just for the transformations, Oscars for both of them, please :>)

In other news: a very happy belated birthday to kiraboshi - sorry luv, completely slipped my mind :S

Comments

[merentha.livejournal.com]

Anybody who intends to trek down to Wyoming because of this movie is going to be seriously disappointed. The pretty landscapes are apparently shot in Canada.

[winter]

Sort of like the "beautiful Chinese forest" in House of Flying Daggers being shot in Lithuania, then :> Someone should really sue these people for false advertising...

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Actually Wyoming looks a lot like that part of Alberta, so people who go there in under the misimpression that's where the film was shot won't be too disappointed. They're both right in the heart of the northern Rockies.

[merentha.livejournal.com]

Would you be from Wyoming? I've heard complaints from Wyoming fans of the movie that the Wyoming mountains look nowhere as lush with vegetation as those seen in the movie. They would be the first to make jokes about Brokeback tourists.

Geographically, Wyoming and Alberta are not even bordering each other.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

I'm in Nebraska (oddly enough, another state Alberta often stands in for).

Wyoming and Alberta don't border each other, but they both sit smack on the Rockies, which look fairly similar from Colorado north. Not identical, but similar; I suspect the degree of lushness depends a lot on whether you're sited on the rainier side of the mountain range or on the drier side.

(If you know an area really well, it's always amusing to watch a movie that's supposedly sited there - but is actually filmed somewhere else - and see the small ways the film gets things wrong. Most films that are supposedly set in the Great Plains, for instance, show scenery that is far too flat, because that's the image the general public has in their minds, but in fact large portions of the plains are rolling hills. What's your favorite example of wierd movie geography?)