Brokeback Mountain

So this is what passes for controversy these days? A sad little film about two people who find each other, make a passionate connection, fall in love, and find themselves unable to be together due to the prevailing social mores? The controversial part is that the two protagonists are male and, further, they are cowboys, and therefore threaten the rugged male archetypes that cowboys represent. It is a sad reflection on the sociopolitical climate that a quiet, tender, moving drama like Brokeback Mountain becomes daring and controversial. Back in the last Hollywood golden age of the ’70s this film would have been quaint, almost old-fashioned; now, over 20 years later, it is contentious. Has our culture been that beaten down by right-wing conservatism draped in the mock-sheep’s clothing of religion?


All that aside. Though Ang Lee may seem to be a strange choice as director, there is a connecting line to this picture, through Sense and Sensibility and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the connective tissue being the theme of lovers being kept apart by the traditions and cultural barriers of their respective societies. The tragedy with Brokeback Mountain is that the two protagonists, Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger), find themselves unable or unwilling to break down those barriers. They meet when they are hired to watch over a herd of sheep on the titular edifice, and begin an affair, then return to their respective lives to marry and start families. But the shadow of Brokeback Mountain, representing their connection and their love, haunts them and they spend many years returning to the wilderness together for week-long trips, desperate to keep their relationship alive but at a loss as to how to deal with it.

The film is somber, almost muted in tone. Ang Lee directs with a quiet, effective subtlety, generally avoiding preachiness and big, Oscar-baiting dramatic moments. He is helped considerably by two superb lead performances and a screenplay with an impressive literary pedigree. Gyllenhaal and Ledger create complex, believable characters, particularly Ledger who is genuinely excellent. The screenplay is by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, based on a short story by Annie Proulx. McMurtry is best known for writing Lonesome Dove. The only major flaw in the film is the shallow, forgettable characterizations of the women in Jack and Ennis’ lives. All they have to do in the film is react and little else; as characters in the drama they are disposable.

In addition to the ‘controversy’ of the main characters being gay, the other main reason the film has attracted attention is the scenery. Filmed in southern Alberta, not far from where I live, the landscapes are indeed breathtaking, but in all honesty if someone gave me a film camera I could probably capture scenery just as beautiful. The scenery and the homosexual angle are really besides the point. See this film for what it is: a beautiful and melancholy meditation on the walls that we collectively erect to keep us apart from the ones we love.

The Motorcycle Diaries

I'll leave you now, with myself, the man I used to be...
--Ernesto Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries

Like all good journeys, The Motorcycle Diaries is as much a discovery of self as of place. The film tells the story of Ernesto Guevara's epic motorcycle tour of Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado, from Argentina, through Chile, Peru, Columbia, and ending in Venezuela. Together they discover the country and the people, all from Granado’s capricious and testy Norton 500 motorcycle.


Guevara (Gael García Bernal) gradually awakens to the plight of the peasants and workers he encounters, attempting to touch them and, more critically for who he will become, allowing them to touch him. Though he will become a leader of the Cuban revolution, and will embody a fascist-tinged revolutionary ideal, this film is not about politics so much as how someone can be profoundly changed by contact with our common humanity. It is also the inner geography of a boy transforming to a man.

Authentically shooting on many of the journey’s actual locations, Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles directs The Motorcycle Diaries with a lyrical beauty and observant humanity that flows the film like a languid but purposeful river. As Salles has noted, “We basically tried to film the story as if it were unfolding before our very eyes.” Time and place are allowed to entrance us, and if we don’t get inside the skin of Guevara like we should, we at least feel as if he ends up in a different place, inside, that he was at the beginning. The entrancing, lyrical music, composed and performed by Gustovo Santaolalla, is the perfect soundtrack to awakening and personal change.

Co-producer of Fernando Meirelles’ magnificent City of God, Salles is a filmmaker to watch. I eagerly anticipate seeing what he did with the Japanese horror remake Dark Water, which is in my Zip.ca rental queue.

The Motorcycle Diaries is available on DVD.

CARLITO'S WAY

Patrick Doyle might seem an odd choice to compose the score to Carlito’s Way (1993), but his music is integral to the film’s success. Doyle scored Kenneth Branagh’s engrossing adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V, and his majestic music for Brian DePalma’s crime story Carlito’s Way reflects the film’s deeper resonance as a Shakespearean tragedy. The soaring, poetic elegy that underscores the sequence that begins and ends the film plays as a sad, haunting requiem both for the title character, Carlito (Al Pacino), and for a code of honour, a way of life that is dying.


Written by David Koepp based on two novels by former Judge Edwin Torres, Carlito’s Way skillfully weaves the story of drug kingpin Carlito Brigante through several weeks after his early release from a 30-year prison sentence courtesy of hotshot lawyer Dave Kleinfeld (an almost unrecognizable Shawn Penn). Brigante has had a change of heart while in prison (“You don’t get reformed; you just run out of wind,” he explains) and his overriding goal is to stay low long enough to earn $75,000 by running a nightclub for Kleinfeld then buy his way into a car rental business run by a friend in the Bahamas. Fate, of course, has other plans.

Carlito tries to hook up with his former girlfriend Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), with whom he cut off all ties during his prison sentence (“Best to just cut it clean”). Gail represents an exquisite possibility, someone who can pull him out of his world and into the one he wants to escape to. Doyle’s hauntingly romantic music layers sharp poignance to a scene of Carlito watching Gail, a dancer, in her dance studio while he huddles in the rain on an adjacent rooftop. Gail’s hope of making it big as a dance performer on the stage is tarnished and almost lost, though, and Carlito’s dream opens possibility for her too.


Ironically, it is Carlito’s basic decency and loyalty to a code of honour that threatens their future. Carlito feels that he owes Kleinfeld for his early release. Kleinfeld gradually turns out to be someone who is not remotely worth such loyalty, but Carlito cannot let go of his perceived debt. Corrupt and coked-up, Kleinfeld runs afoul of the mob and enlists Carlito’s help, and just as Carlito is close to his dream, the web-like strands of fate snare him.

Carlito’s Way is tense, involving, and moving. The story is nicely structured, in spite of a prologue that appears to give away Carlito’s ultimate fate. How much more tense the film would have been had the filmmakers eliminated the prologue, but it is a testament to how well made the movie is that it survives such a blunder and even delivers a slam-bang ending.

And what a finale: a 20-minute chase sequence set mostly on the New York subway, with an almost continuous music score. Pursued by mob hitmen, Carlito races to meet Gail and take a train out of the city and into his dream. The camera follows Carlito up stairs, along platforms, through train carriages, dogged by the forces of his former life. The ending of Carlito’s Way is one of the great examples of pure cinema—little dialogue and all visual movement, editing, music, and performance. It’s a tour-de-force, especially remarkable considering how many Hollywood films fumble their ending, and a testament to the quality of all that has come before in the movie. As beautifully shot as it is, the climax wouldn’t mean a damn thing unless we were invested in the characters. The script and performances have all led up to this moment, and it explodes on screen in a tempestuous, galvanic flight away from the Shakespearean fates biting at Carlito’s heels.

This may be the best direction that Brian DePalma has completed in a major Hollywood film. The attention-getting camera moves that mar earlier films are controlled here, allowing the performance and story to play their pivotal roles. But make no mistake, DePalma’s directing is stylish and assured, and he creates supreme tension in several scenes, such as the excruciating build-up to a deadly shoot-out in a bar.

With a classical resonance that most thrillers lack, Carlito’s Way has unfortunately often been overshadowed by the cult status of DePalma and Pacino’s other collaboration, Scarface, but this is by far the better film. A personal favourite, I would even venture to say that Carlito’s Way is one of the best crime thrillers ever made.

Carlito’s Way is now available as an “Ultimate Edition”, with several short documentaries on the making of the film. The picture quality in anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen is exemplary.

The Matador

Though I hate to make a Bond reference when writing about a Pierce Brosnan movie, truth is that in a strange circuitous way main character Julian Noble in The Matador is closer to the literary 007 than Brosnan was ever allowed to be in the four official James Bond films. He’s a burnt-out, womanizing, boozing, existentially lonely assassin, one step away from the psychiatrist’s couch. Strip away the comic layers from the character and what you have is Ian Fleming’s James Bond. And, wouldn’t you know it, Brosnan plays it perfectly. But I promise not to mention the secret agent again; Brosnan will have to live with that tuxedoed shadow from now on, so I’ll drop it.


In all good comic narratives, at the heart of the comedy lies a serious story. So it is with The Matador. Greg Kinnear plays Danny Wright, a business owner in Mexico City to close a much-needed deal. Also in town is Julian Noble (Brosnan), a hitman (or “facilitator of fatalities” as he prefers to be known). Danny and Julian meet up in a bar, and a friendship drunkenly stumbles to life. Though this is a very funny film, at its core is the idea of a lonely soul realizing he has no deep connections with any other human being on the planet, and reaching out to forge his first genuine friendship.

Brosnan has a blast, playing the ironically-monikered Noble to the hilt. Walking with a stiff-assed swagger, swathed in an unbuttoned loud shirt, gold chain dangling, the drunken, chain-smoking, solipsistic Noble is the ’80s hedonist turned on his head. Some of Noble’s dialogue (written by Richard Shepard, also the director) is priceless. “I’m as serious as an erection problem” and “I’d be interested if she lost 20 pounds and 20 years” are two memorable lines. When Noble strides through the hotel lobby, clad only in briefs and boots, beer can in hand, gut hanging out, you can hear the sound of Brosnan’s film persona being torn up and tossed aside. Lurking inside Noble’s chintzy bravado, however, is an insular, friendless cardboard cut-out of a man lacking a family, a genuine companion, a home, or any sort of genuine connection to anyone or anything. Noble’s relationship with Danny is probably the first actual link he has had with another human being, and the film turns out to be surprisingly tender and subtly moving in showing how genuine feeling grows between them, and especially in how superficially straight-laced and timid Danny ends up helping the burnt-out hitman (Danny also owes an emotional debt to Noble, revealed in a flashback, that I will not disclose here).


Kinnear’s role could easily have been the dull straight man to Brosnan’s loud uncouthness, but the script and performance add depth. Danny has had bad luck, and is afraid of losing his wife, Bean (Hope Davis) because of his inability to pull himself out of the gutter before he gets kicked back in. But he also has everything that Noble’s numbed soul yearns for: a home and someone to genuinely love him. As Danny’s wife, Hope Davis contributes a quirky and memorable character, in another part that in a lesser film would have been disposable. Particularly amusing is her eagerness to see Noble’s gun, like a schoolgirl excited by doing something forbidden. The script and performances work to build emotional connections between the characters, and it is this care and attention that set The Matador apart and raise it far above the pallid sitcom it could so easily have become.