Davechoc
Posts: 75
Joined: 18/4/2006
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I agree with the sentiments of anyone who loved this film, so rather than review it here are my thoughts on why it should have won Best Picture:
Crash - great film, fabulous performances, but just far too much of an 'issues' film. Every character (and there were too many to give any of them any depth) seemed to talk so constantly and histrionically about race that it just felt so unrealistic; a few more scenes with ordinary dialogue would have made those casually racist remarks seem so much more significant and would have encouraged the audience to want to know more about the characters and the reasons behind their attitudes; as it was there was a barrier that stopped the audience really engaging with them and thus considering the issues in more depth afterwards. I also believe that, though racism is unfortunately to be found everywhere, this particular film held significance mainly for the inhabitants of Los Angeles and similar big American cities.
Capote - I found PS Hoffman's performance better than the film itself (as with Johnny Depp and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), which was good but somehow not as gripping as I'd hoped. Up until about forty minutes in I felt myself being slowly drawn in by the mesmerising images of bleak countryside and the juxtaposition of the effect the murders had on the community with Capote's slightly unsettling interest in the case, but from then on I lost interest. The pace flagged and, the sense of exhaustion from the process of creating something aside, I didn't really feel engaged by the characters or their situations by the end of the film.
Munich - I felt this was hugely overrated. It is obviously deals with complex issues and I can't pretend to understand the politics in any great depth, but therein lies the problem: the film toyed with facts, people and events in such a way that I didn't know what to take as true, what to be entirely speculative, or indeed what organisations were. Avner seems a gentle, loving husband with a baby on the way, and it seems implausible that he would be chosen for such a mission, especially given his apparent nerves and inexperience at the first assassination. Similarly it was only at the very end of the film that I realised who the sweet old woman at the start was. There were other implausible elements, such as the ease with which the assassinations were carried out through a French source. Each assassination was dwelt upon far too much, and while a more commercial montage sequence may have felt out of place, the lingering over each one seriously slowed the pace (the film was a good half-hour too long), and the film's moral and political messages seemed heavy-handed and unoriginal: the protaganists slowly realise the futile nature of their business and the way each victim is replaced by another, ie violence begets violence. Well duh. I felt that the hit squad were painted in a rather too amiable light for too much of the film, and while Spielberg obviously had a tricky political and religious balancing act to achieve, the film overall seemed politically and artistically much too ambiguous, with, for instance, the real-life cases of mistaken identity entirely ignored.
Good Night, and Good Luck - not much to say here. I enjoyed this film very much, it's a lean, intelligent and slickly paced drama in which the stand-off between the journalists and Senator McCarthy (deftly shown to be horribly sleazy through adroit use of real footage) is conveyed through the claustrophobic set, with even the soundtrack provided by a singer within a booth at the studios. Performances are uniformly excellent, even if Robert Downey Jr.'s marriage sub-plot should have been excised, but it is not the meaty sort of film you expect to win Best Picture.
Brokeback Mountain - I am of course a little biased here, since as a gay man I am very happy that such a film has been so successful when gay characters in cinema either seem to be in sweet but slight independent films or camp-asexual-played-for-laughs-one-dimensional-gay-best-friends in formulaic rom-coms. However since it has been so universally popular and since not all gay men have loved it this isn't really a relevant bias.
As a film this works in so many ways: it is stunning to look at, unfolds at a magisterial pace without ever dragging; the music, while not what I expected, is perfect (and more effective than a sweeping romantic score would have been I suspect); and the performances are excellent and powerful without being showy. Jake and Heath are fabulous but Michelle Williams too was very affecting, her fragility conveying the turmoil homophobia has not just on gay men and women themselves but on the lives of those around them, and it is extraordinary to think that the prejudice in this community at this time is one which still leads some gay men to marry, have children and live lives of deception and repression today. The deep love which forms between the two men is convincingly portrayed, and not as animalistic lust; the scenes towards the end of the film, including one in which they stand by the campfire together as Ennis tenderly sings to the drowsy Jack, are heartbreaking. The sex is not in any real sense graphic - in terms of mainstream cinema, and to a straight audience perhaps, but far more explicit straight sex scenes can be found in many a film and tv show. The quality of the acting from the two leads contradicts the media's simplistic 'gay cowboy' slogan. Jack is perhaps more straightforwardly gay, as his behaviour in some parts attest, but Heath as Ennis portrays a man so unflinchingly introverted that it seems if it wasn't for Jack, he wouldn't have a true, intimate relationship with anyone of either gender.
Where Brokeback succeeds is how, if it is an 'issues' film at all (dealing with the effects of prejudice on relationships), it examines these issues not through polemic or long speeches, but through good old-fashioned story-telling, through believable, human characters and events, so that the audience isn't told what the film is about, but rather is drawn into it, empathising with the characters so that, by the end of the film, a bond has developed which ensures the story lingers in the mind long after the credits have rolled. It thus succeeds on a purely filmic level and an emotional one, and is a great artistic achievement whose issues, as the reaction to the film in certain parts of the world has attested, are as timely as ever.
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Printable Version
RE: Brokeback Mountain - 
The same has happened to me with Munich and Walk The Line - fine movies, but the fact they are being loved by so many, and being nominated for Best Picture Oscars, makes me really angry for some reason, and thus makes me dislike the films even more.
Who knows what's happening inside that head of mine.
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