“Brokeback Mountain.” A Brick review. It’s a winner. It’s for mature audiences, mature as in for grown-ups who realize sadness exists as does love and passion. Mature as in people who love “story” and love characters developed in “story.”
What I haven’t seen, though, is a professional review saying this: “Brokeback Mountain would be a heck of a double-feature with “The Ice Storm.” Oh, scratch that. You see those two in one evening, and you’ll drive off a bridge on the way home.
But comparing the two Ang Lee pictures would be appropriate, for a pro movie critic. They hit the same years, just about. “Brokeback” starts in 1963 with the guys about 19, but it extends 20 years. “The Ice Storm” is about the early 1970s. The latter’s all over suburban middle class, and the former everyone this month knows is about what’s left of the cowboy career. “Ice Storm” has college-educated characters. Just about everyone in “Brokeback” are high-school dropouts. Both movies examine the mature (as defined lamely above) theme of disillusionment as part of Americans approaching middle age.
If they were 19 forty years later, Jack and Ennis may or may not be “out,” depending on the part of the country they’re in, but instead of cowboys, they’d be midnight-shift shelvers at their Wal-Mart. Then the children of the couples in “The Ice Storm” would be their age now, repeating those revelations that come to most of us in time, but usually not in time to keep from messing up. -30-
