Looking at the Mountain

Early fall, I had been looking forward to Brokeback Mountain coming out. Not as much as some other releases -- Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, and Rent-- but I thought it looked quite promising. Ang Lee is a good director, and while I don't care much for Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhall is, to use a not-too-technical term, yummy.

For one reason or another, I didn't see it. I actually have not seen a lot of movies that one could not take children to -- not since I saw Capote, at any rate, which would have been early December. And when I did go to movies, I needed to see comedies, escapist fare; Brokeback Mountain seemed too heavy, too difficult. Now I find myself in the position of wanting to see more serious fare, with Brokeback still in the theaters ... and I no longer want to see it.

In the post-Oscar analysis, with the lambasting of the Academy's decision to award the Best Picture Oscar to Crash, it seems that liking Brokeback Mountain has become a political litmus test. What else to make of the analysts decrying Crash's selection as an example of rampant homophobia? Ignoring the fact that there were, in fact, people who were less than impressed with Brokeback Mountain, for reasons having nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the quality . (As there were with Crash, too, for that matter.) I know people who have not even seen Crash who are willing to blame Brokeback's loss to homophobia. Sheesh.

Me? I don't think Crash should have won. Does that make me a racist? I think Capote and Good Night and Good Luck were better movies. I'm not alone: if you look on Rottentomatoes.com, which aggregates film reviews from all over to give sort of a general rating, Good Night & Good Luck and Capote both scored well above Brokeback Mountain, which in turn scored well above Crash. But you don't see partisans for Capote screaming about homophobia in the award process -- oh, wait, Truman Capote was an "effete New York intellectual," as Jon Stewart pointed out. Doesn't count.

The fact is, Brokeback Mountain got made and distributed by a major studio, and as of March 26, 2006, has made $158 million, a nice return on a budget on $14 million. It was nominated for eight Oscars, it won three. And while people mutter how courageous it is for actors to play gay characters, within the last 15 years, several actors and actresses have won Oscars for playing gay, lesbian, or transgendered characters -- Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Nicole Kidman in The Hours, Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, Philip Seymour Hoffman this year for Capote -- and quite a few more have been nominated. None of them seem to have suffered as a result.

Is there homophobia in Hollywood? No doubt. After all, the number of performers who are openly gay is slim, with actresses outnumbering actors. (God bless Sir Ian McKellen!) Is that why Crash won? Who knows? It's a movie about Los Angeles, most of the voters live in the San Fernando Valley, and it resonates with them on a primal, everyday level in a way that a movie about a couple of Wyoming ranchhands doesn't. (That theory is not mine: I've heard it more places than I can shake a copy of EW at. My theory is rather more cynical than that.)

I don't like my entertainment choices being turned into political or religious statements, whether that be by members of the Catholic League who opposed people like me seeing Kevin Smith's Dogma (best movie on religion ever made) or fundamentalists who imply that I need to see The Passion of the Christ to be "saved." Or people who insist that liking Brokeback Mountain is a requirement for showing how unhomophobic I am.

After all, in the end, they're only movies.