Long day of plane rides Friday, followed by a long car ride home from Dulles. I can’t say I accomplished much on Saturday since I was really beat from the traveling. I was happy just to be home with Eleya and the kids!
My mom had made plans to come over and babysit for us today, though — yes, it was actually her idea! — so Eleya and I went to see the phenomenal Brokeback Mountain. A movie about the passionate love between two range-riding Marlboro men, playing in our hometown? We could barely believe it was true, even if the remarkable Ang Lee was behind it.
Brokeback Mountain lived up to all the hype and then some. Spare dialog and lush visuals, emotionally brutal and riveting, and some of the best acting I can remember from any film in recent memory made this a masterpiece. Any sniggering or prurience elicited by the somewhat violent first sexual contact between the two men is quickly wiped away by the overwhelming bond of friendship and love that develops between the two. (Wiped away for everyone, that is, except for the forty-something “Desperate Housewives”-wannabe Oprah-bots who sat near us.)
My bet is on Heath Ledger for a Best Actor Oscar and Ang Lee for Best Director. This movie was devastating, and I for one will gladly buy the DVD when it comes out, so it can proudly join my other favorite romantic dramas on the shelf such as The English Patient and Doctor Zhivago. Now if only the movie could get less press because it’s a gay love story, and more for the fact that it’s an extraordinary film. Highly recommended.