Brokeback Mountain

I'm really glad I read the short story before watching this movie otherwise I would have been really disappointed about how anticlimatic the movie is. While the story was more graphic, it was also more emotional. I felt more emotionally connected with the characters and could feel their internal struggles much more intensly than in the movie. It was hard to keep the characters straight in the story at first but by the middle it was easy to see that jack was much more emotionally involved than ennis. I was actually really excited to watch this movie because I heard so many mixed reviews. As taboo as the movie is cracked up to be, I didn't find it uncomfortable at all which surprised me. Everyone that has ever really been in love knows what it's like to be crazy about someone, it's all you can do to not think about that person and seeing that person simply makes everything inside of you complete. I didn't find their relationship unnatural becuase the kind of love they had for eachother was natural. It was unnatural that they were married to women they didn't truly love, they had children they didn't really seem to care about all that much, they just did what society wanted them to do, they did what was "right." I could relate to Jack the most becuase he knew what made him happy and he would have done anything to get that happiness. Jack's idealistic view was so harshly contrasted with ennis's realism that you almost get mad at ennis for being so logical. When Jack said they should get their own ranch in the mountains so they can finally be together I really wanted that to happen. I don't really feel the need to make any more distinctions between the movie and story because the plots were basically the same. Like I said I found the story to be more emotionally charged but Jake Gyllenhall's performance was incredibly powerful. He was extremely good at translating the narrated feelings from the story into his eyes, his expressions, his everything. Brokeback mountain is a forbidden love story, it broke conventions in the type of love and it got me thinking. I've always been religious but I've never looked down upon homosexuality and I'm sure plenty of over zealous religious people went nuts over this movie because they view homosexuality as a choice. I thought it was very moving how homosexuality wasn't portrayed as a preference but rather as an innate quality. In many ways I find this story much more heart wrenching than romeo or juliet because jack and ennis's love was considered wrong on every level possible, except the real tradegy isn't forbidden love, it's society suffocating us.