Reflections on Brokeback Mountain

Reflections on Brokeback Mountain

            If there ever was a threat to “heteronormativity” it was with the movie Brokeback Mountain by Ang Lee.  It is a story of love unrealized between two of America’s most revered symbols of masculinity, the cowboy.  The seemingly invisible fabric that homosexuality weaves in the enclaves of American life is wonderfully presented in this film.  Ang Lee does a phenomenal job of bringing to the screen the pain, frustration and longing that accompanies homosexual relationships in a staunchly heterosexual society.

            Ang Lee presents “heteronormativity” as a ferocious device that provides homosexuals at once with societal acceptance and simultaneously with their demise, as they are not able to truly achieve the fruition that their orientation designs.  The homosexual men in the movie were married to women and their marriages were in various stages of dysfunction.  The men are desperate and ensnared.  They want affection.  They want attention.  They want a real connection.  They want love.  And they find it in each other.

            The lengths to which the same-gender-loving individuals in the movie go to in order to experience being together are very reveling.  The movie’s main characters try repeatedly to make plans to be together, but the violent threat of “heteronormative” reprisal was an ever present barrier.  The two main characters in the movie, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist continue a long distance relationship for over ten years.  They spend months apart and see each other only once or twice a year so they can re-experience their homosexual passions.  The character Jack Twist has to take sporadic trips to Mexico in order to fulfill his homosexual longings in the absence of Ennis.

            The bonds between the two main characters last a life time.  After the violent and tragic death of Jack Twist, Ennis kept the mementos of their union when they were cowboys on Brokeback Mountain.  The last scene in the movie shows Ennis pining for the love he was never able to fulfill at the hand of “heteronormativity”.

Published:  http://www.cafedelapensee.com/node/1310