Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
I still can't decide: what's the message here? It seems strange that so many have hailed it as a watershed in gay cinema when, on the face of it, it's just another in the long tradition of homophobic morality tales. Both Jack and Ennis describe their relationship as an addiction, an inescapable and inescapably damaging flaw in their own natures; it destroys both of their lives. That's not an uplifting story.
And, yet, there are twists. There's the hint that it was self-denial that ruined them -- if they'd accepted it, gone off to live and work together, not fallen into loveless(?) marriages and lies, it all would've been alright. Of course, Ennis's childhood memories (and Jack's own end) are a sharp contradiction.
The answer is in the ending, maybe, that strangely hopeful ending. Ennis is bitter and lonely and destroyed -- or so the morality tale goes: wife gone, the one child he has a solid relationship with no longer needs him; and Jack, of course, is gone. So why doesn't it feel like death? Because this isn't a morality tale. There was a failed marriage, but something good still came out of it; one of them's getting married. Jack's death was a testament to bigotry; it wasn't a threat, a fable's admonition to No No Don't Do That! It was a tragedy, not a moral.
There is no moral here, because life doesn't have a moral. If this movie is a watershed, that's why. Because these are real people, just people. Not labels.
The Gay Cowboy Movie
I still can't decide: what's the message here? It seems strange that so many have hailed it as a watershed in gay cinema when, on the face of it, it's just another in the long tradition of homophobic morality tales. Both Jack and Ennis describe their relationship as an addiction, an inescapable and inescapably damaging flaw in their own natures; it destroys both of their lives. That's not an uplifting story.
And, yet, there are twists. There's the hint that it was self-denial that ruined them -- if they'd accepted it, gone off to live and work together, not fallen into loveless(?) marriages and lies, it all would've been alright. Of course, Ennis's childhood memories (and Jack's own end) are a sharp contradiction.
The answer is in the ending, maybe, that strangely hopeful ending. Ennis is bitter and lonely and destroyed -- or so the morality tale goes: wife gone, the one child he has a solid relationship with no longer needs him; and Jack, of course, is gone. So why doesn't it feel like death? Because this isn't a morality tale. There was a failed marriage, but something good still came out of it; one of them's getting married. Jack's death was a testament to bigotry; it wasn't a threat, a fable's admonition to No No Don't Do That! It was a tragedy, not a moral.
There is no moral here, because life doesn't have a moral. If this movie is a watershed, that's why. Because these are real people, just people. Not labels.