I've said this before about this movie, but what I love about Brokeback Mountain is exactly what Juan didn't like about it. Finally, a movie that DOESN'T hit you over the head with the sentimentality of the situation. Instead of consciously tugging at the heart strings, Ang Lee simply presents the reality of the situation. He just tells the story, in a brilliantly understated manner. This blew me away -- but not right away. The first time I saw it, I walked out thinking much the same thing: "Why didn't it blow me away?" Well, the next day, I was sitting in my cube at work when I was suddenly floored with emotion. The film's affect comes later, after you've had time to think about it and digest its weight.

No offense to Juan or anyone else who feels that the characters should have ended up together, but I'm really shocked that anyone would think that this movie should have ended happily. If you were raised in 1963 -- in MONTANA, of all places -- I seriously doubt that you would be living an openly gay life. Hell, I grew up in Gettysburg, PA, and it wasn't until I moved away that I was finally able to break free of societal constraints and come out. But that was in 1991, after the gay rights movement had gained serious momentum and movies were being made about gay people left and right. Again, no offense, but I think it's kind of insulting to the immense power and the magnitude and emotional weight of the the truth of this movie that anyone would say that it should have ended differently. This is exactly the way the movie should have ended -- like real life.

I saw the movie for a fourth time last night. I really thought I was done seeing it in the theaters after the third time, but last night there was a special AFI Awards presentation of the film at the ArcLight in Hollywood that was followed by a Q&A with screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossanna, and there was no way that I could miss out on hearing them talk about the writing of this beautifully elegiac film. There was a guy in the audience who'd seen it SEVEN times, and he was so emotional when he started talking about how the film captured his experience coming out perfectly.

Brokeback Mountain will not speak to everybody. Unfortunately, today's gay community is so informed by Will & Grace and Queer as Folk and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and spoiled by how liberal things have gotten that we've forgotten where we came from. We demand that all films with gay characters end happily (a rather immature notion, I must say) or that they show more sex (a rather insulting one), and if they don't do those two things, we accuse them of misrepresenting the gay community. But what I love about Brokeback -- and what I think signifies just how far we have come -- is that is a movie that has the power to appeal to all audiences, no matter your background or personal beliefs. It's a film that is as designed to entertain the mainstream as it is a movie that speaks to the gay experience, and that is its beauty. That is its brilliance. The best movies are always the ones that don't pander to the choir, and Brokeback -- thanx to the mesmerizing talent of the incomparable Ang Lee -- makes loneliness and despair, and indeed true love, a universal thing once and for all.

That is something that should be applauded by everyone, IMHO.

Just my $.02, though.