An Affair to Remember

This article was forwarded to me on a listserv that I'm on here at school. I think that it is a really important and powerful look at Brokeback Mountain and the ways that it's been represented to gain mainstream appeal.

The article's a spoiler by the way, so don't read it if you've not seen the film. Go see the film asap, then read.

The New York Review of Books: An Affair to Remember: "The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it."

Incidentally, Daniel Mendelsohn quotes how off SF Chronicle's Mick LaSalle is in the piece. LaSalle is frequently terribly off in his movie opinions, although I must admit that I totally uncritically accepted his review when I read it, probably because it was positive, and we usually disagree about whether the Chronicle's little man should be jumping out of his seat or sleeping. Mendelsohn points out that in this case, the problem is a more fundamental understanding of the film's texture and meaning, our understanding of the complexities of gay identities and masculinity.