Love is a Force of Nature

Last night I saw the Milwaukee premiere of Brokeback Mountain. In fact, I saw it as part of a fundraiser for Center Advocates to pull in some money to defeat the marriage amendment in Wisconsin and so 10K and 3 hours (there was a party, natch) later, I was feeling pretty good. Of course, it's Milwaukee and so we're just getting the film now so I have to say that I was somewhat ruined by all the hype. But after 24 hours, things are layering out.

I have always been struck by the ways people love - how we fall into it, and how we stay the course. What is great about this story for me is how these two men build a life together even though they love from two different vantage points. Ennis, the strong silent type, starts out as a reluctant participant allowing himself to explore a connection, a feeling. Over the course of his life that is rockier than the mountains he flees to, he realizes that he is happiest with Jack. Unwilling to take a risk and conditioned into fear, his love and his commitment grow despite ever present regret. He is consumed emotionally.

Jack, I think, is different. To me, he seemed the instigator - the one who knows what he wants and goes for it, the one who isn't happy unless he rides for the whole 8 seconds. I felt like he was so happy to have someone in his life with whom he could be completely honest about himself. That power fueled his love. To me it seemed that he was more in love with the idea of Ennis than Ennis himself - that he wanted so much to have the life that he truly desired that it didn't matter who it was with. What crushes him in the end is the knowledge that his love would be unrequited, at least to the extent and the freedom that he wants. Ultimately, he is consumed physically.

Personally, I don't know why the anti-gay agenda is so against everyone going to see this film. Unless, of course, they themselves haven't bothered to watch it. Marriages break up, lives are destroyed, everybody winds up miserable because of this love affair. Seems like the perfect roll of yellow CAUTION tape surrounding everything gay. Unless they saw what we saw last night which is that you just can't fight or change who or how you love.

What made this movie sad for me was how hard these starcrossed two tried. Though they were fated to fail, these two found a connection if only on the mountain. And even then they found themselves working off different pages. You just want them to be together. You want to reach into the screen from your 21st century seat and pull them out of their machismo laden unforgiving era. You want to pat them on the back as if to say "just go for it, it'll be OK", reassuring them that as the decades move forward, things will get better.

And as the fundraiser reminded me, we still continue to have the same hope that things will.