Brokeback Mountain

Screen, big or small, and stage are, unarguably the most popular forms of entertainment. Entertainment of the masses may be the primary, but certainly not their sole function and purpose. Many of us tend to take this latter - entertainment-centric view and overlook that cinema and stage also constitute a strong medium for or an expression of performing art. Isn’t it true that most of us would rather avoid serious theatre and cinema and leave them only for the critics?.

I too had procrastinated for a while before finally deciding to see 'Brokeback Mountain' at the semi-open air movie hall of our Club last week. I had reservations about seeing this movie, inter alia, because of the sexual orientation of the lead characters reportedly portrayed in the movie. When the movie started, I was taken in by the formidable combination of beautiful Canadian landscape and modern cinematography but as it progressed, I became increasingly aware of my own heterosexual prejudices and even considered walking out. But something inside me asked me to hold out, and just as well that it did.

As the emotional bond between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist builds up, it also grows on you. It did not take me long to turn a Nelson eye to the physicality of the relationship between the ranch hand and the rodeo cowboy and succumb to its sheer sentimentality instead. Jack’s single line "I wish I knew how to quit you" is quite moving and reminded me of, what may be termed as its heterosexual equivalent, a somewhat similar exchange between Dr Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova in that great movie classic.

Like all good movies, Brokeback Mountain too has many great scenes but I found the last scene between Jack’s mother and Ennis as the most moving of them all. They were probably the only ones who had known and loved Jack as no one else had done; and more importantly, as it happens with such people, they both seemed to sense out each other instinctively although they met very briefly and were never to meet again.