Golden Globe, Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain has just won the best film award. As they have carefully called him, "a man caught in a complicated love story", Heath Ledger spent the evening looking somewhat embarassed, as an entire country was undoubtedly imagining his feelings of a straight man performing in erotic scenes with another straight man. I have just seen the film this weekend, so now I can honestly say that the movie is not an outstanding work that deserves the Best Film award. However, the grandure of the first epic movie about gay love certainly warrants such a political win. Let us not forget that another political statement of the night was to award the Best Foreign Film to a Palestinian movie. I don't know anything about it besides a few displayed shots that included someone taping explosives on himself. Perhaps the award wasn't political at all. Perhaps. It sure gave the director a fine opportunity to announce that award signifies people's recognition that Palestinians deserve freedom unconditionally.

Well, back to Brokeback Mountain. First of all, it's a love saga, a life-long story of two people who could not be together because of various circumstances. I have to respect Ang Lee for not pushing on viewers the moral of how hard life is for gay couples. The movie contains important scenes about that, but its power is in the honest portrayal of an unexpected relationship, thus bringing it from a category of special interest films into a category of epic love stories. Heath Ledger did an outstanding job. The scenery is very beautiful. And yes, I did cry in the end.