'Brokeback Mountain' - A Review (Unmarked Spoilers)

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Having done so, I'd have to say that ... if you don't get the connection between the two cowboy lovers while they're up on Brokeback Mountain, but rather feel it only when they spent years apart pining for each other ... it's that way in the source material and I feel that the movie can't be blamed for that.

I finally read the source material, too. In some ways, I agree with you. But in some ways, I actually thought the men were *more* expressive in the story than in the film. There was a bit more ease to one of the characters that I think they purposefully steered away from in the film. There was a level of honesty between them that I think the adaptation sort of pushed away.

As for the wives, I didn't loathe the emphasis on them; it was not overdone and they didn't get a majority of screen time (nor did their emotional journey overshadow.) I definitely had a problem with the secondary female characters, which really deserved no more than a mention in conversation within the film. They were, after all, just part of the lovers' conversation in the story, and I'm far more interested in the lovers communicating this to each other than in their dull fookbuddies.

That's the trouble with adapting a short story into a film. It's dense and rich for a reason, and if you spread it out it's stretched too thin.

But I want to make clear that there was much that I enjoyed about the film.