thoughts about Brokeback Mountain

I love Brokeback Mountain.

I know there are probably a lot of people like me out there right now, proclaiming their immense love for the movie, or how they absolutely loved it. If ever there was one thing where I would unabashedly join in the masses of people in doing, this would be it. If not for the fact that Adeline was around, I would probably have teared as I left the cinema. And it’s not hard to see why at all.

I love movies with sad endings. Like Closer, where the people realize they really cannot be with the ones they love because love is just too selfish, and it is better to receive love than to give it. Like In the mood for Love, where love goes unrequited because of guilt and societal norms. Brokeback Mountain fits the bill perfectly in that sense. I really don’t understand how some people can bash this film with such vengeance, when all I really experienced was really just a love story between two human beings. I saw portrayed in the movie a relationship that was doomed from the start because of societal norms and the characters’ repression of the true love because of the guilt and need to be seen as normal. Brokeback Mountain was really just a metaphor for the safe haven that we all wish we could hide in sometimes, where external judgment and social constrains cease to exist. I admire the love that the two men have, because I feel I might never ever find someone and love to that degree of intensity and passion as the love shared by them. A love so strong and so powerful as to render me powerless, a love so intense that I would be afraid to succumb totally to it.

I’m feeling terribly melancholic now. Listening to Damien Rice’s “Blower’s Daughter”, which just about worsens the melancholy. Perhaps this phase will pass. But sometimes I feel that I’m stuck in a downward spiral where there’s really no escape. I felt really sad when I recounted my past history to Adeline over dinner last night. I think somehow or another most people get stuck in a relationship of convenience; the thinking that having a partner is better than having no partner at all. I think sometimes that convenience stems from the fact that we really don’t want to be alone, than another is better than nothing at all. And we all grow accustomed to that convenience. Years may go by without another realizing the hollowness of the relationship. I think I’ve just become very cynical about this kind out things. Sometimes I look at my dad and mom, and think: do they really still love each other as much? What happened to that wild passion that is supposed to exist in every relationship? or does convenience prevail? Maybe the husband wakes up in the morning and feels absolutely nothing for the woman sleeping by his side, but nevertheless continues in his life because of the convenience of having the wife around to look after the kids, of having an outlet for his sexual needs so readily available? Maybe the man just thinks that he needs to do his minimal in order to have someone by his side when he is old and cannot easily attract female companionship anymore. Maybe we’ll never end up with someone we truly love, because love takes effort and receiving unconditional love, even from someone you might not like, is better than having to put in so much effort every day of the relationship. I don’t know. I recall the times when I was with this girl, but couldn’t stop thinking of this other girl, and I couldn’t bear to break things up with the girlfriend because of the convenience of the relationship, because of the immense effort to stop one relationship and start another one again, even though I probably loved the other girl more. I recall choosing one girl over the girl I really liked because of a stupid one night incident, because one relationship seemed to require a lot less effort than the other one. That’s why I admire the courage that Ennis and Jack has I guess, because they were willing to take the path of most resistance to hold on to the love they had.