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Brokeback Mountain

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Bunnyman:
Ah, the fine line between poignancy and emotional manipulation.

pip_helix:
oh, agreed, it's a very fine line.

i'm not saying the movie didn't have it's shlocky moments (heath ledger hugging the shirt? ehhh...) but for the most part, i think it was tastefully done.

Tergon:
Don't misunderstand me.  I said before that the movie was well done and I meant it.  Directing, filmography, acting... the movie deserves all of its hype in those categories.  It's a genuinely good film.

My sole beef is with the story.  Look, I like writing, and I read a lot.  My dream is to be published one day, which should occur around two weeks after world peace is declared when the pope farts monkeys.  So it was the story, the way that the film was written, that got to me.
It's virtually impossible to come up with a NEW story today.  Everything has been done.  Therefore, the trick of a good storyteller isn't to write a totally new story, because that's not possible.  Instead, the trick is to take the story and make it your own.  To change it just enough so that it becomes undoubtably "your" story.
And this is just opinion, but Brokeback Mountain didn't do that for me.  It was too cut-and-dried for my tastes.  Too much like every story before it.

For the record, Harold & Maude was the way it *should* be done.  It's a classic.  But Brokeback Mountain just didn't appeal, and I've tried to explain why.  Hey, maybe it's just me.

nuisance:
I think the story is only done to death if you look at it in such incredibly general terms.  If you made it about a mixed-gender couple you'd still have the setting, 1960s Wyoming, which I think is very important to the details of the story.  

The particular situations the characters face seem quite different from, well, where I'm living.

Think of all the thematic stuff about trying to manage work and so on - Ennis dumping the kids on his wife at the supermarket so he can go to the ranch; later giving his wife crap about taking extra shifts when it's dinner time, etc.  Sure this isn't all of the story, but there's a lot of shit in there about autonomy and the economic situation and so on.  This stuff would still be of interest (to me) whether or not he had conflicted romantic intentions towards a woman or a man.

I dunno, it's not my favourite movie or anything, but it was much better than I had feared.

Tergon:
Yeah, all that stuff in there is true.  There's a lot of themes explored in the movie.  I just...

*sigh*

I don't know.  It's not like I can convince you to change your opinion any better than I can explain my own.  I just didn't really like Brokeback Mountain, is all... and that's really the reason why.  Like I said, it's probably just me, not much I can do about it.  But that's my main problem with the story.

*shrug*

I can't change the way I think or feel.  And since I can't really articulate either of them, it just comes down to a matter of opinion.  Rather than debate that endlessly, I'll just submit that we agree that the REST of the movie was very well done, and we disagree on the quality of the story.  Deal?

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