It is said that there are only five great stories in the world. They have been told and retold on screen throughout the years with each director trying to make his own small contribution to cinematic history. A fresh perspective is taken. Genres combine. Boy meets girl becomes boy meets boy, all against a backdrop of the great American West. A Christmas-set caper begins just after the crime has occurred. While filmmakers should be lauded for their attempts at originality, the results are mixed. What an audience expects is colored by the release strategy and the history of the players involved. Brokeback Mountain, the aforementioned "gay cowboy flick", is an Oscar film-a serious drama that viewers are intended to evaluate seriously. The Ice Harvest, on the other hand, is being released in the Thanksgiving rush and, as such, comes with an expectation of escapism that the film fails to achieve.
Brokeback Mountain
Admit it: when you heard Brokeback Mountain was a "gay cowboy movie," you had two reactions. First, you probably laughed and thought of South Park. Then, you quickly crossed it off your must-see movie list. Surprising then, is the refusal of those involved to shy away from the controversial and potentially off-putting content. When the film's young star Jake Gyllenhaal began to say, "Well, if you were trying to tell a gay love story, you could have-" Ang Lee, the film's sprightly director, was quick to interject. "It is a gay love story," he confidently declared.
Nevertheless, Lee is well aware of people's pre-judgments regarding the film. "The best way to respond to that is to invite them to see the movie. That's what happened after the initial screenings.... People stopped calling it 'gay cowboy' and started calling it a love story. I was very pleased," said Lee of the audience reaction.
To Lee, it is not the labels applied but the expectations that accompany those labels that are the problem. "People think it's something funny. They think it's something like Blazing Saddles," he says.
Brokeback is definitely not Blazing Saddles, but who knows what to expect from a director who followed the Civil War-romance Ride with the Devil with the martial arts masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He is one of Hollywood's most versatile filmmakers and, while his films may share certain themes ("something about free will against social obligations"), establishing a reputation based on a single genre isn't his concern. "They're like my kids, I don't judge them," he said of his films. "I don't really care about how people remember me. I had a blast!"
It was the combination of fresh material and a classic storyline that drew Lee to Brokeback, not the timely nature of the subject. "I think if it's a love story it's important to come out at any time," Lee said. In fact, Brokeback was in development for eight years before it was made. "I passed on it once ,and I decided to do The Hulk. But it stuck with me," he revealed.
It's fortunate that Lee came back to the project, because it was his participation that drew the film's star, Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal is Jack Twist, the slightly more out-half of the gay romance (as opposed to the John Wayne-esque character embodied by Heath Ledger). While he may now be passionate about the film, when he first heard of Brokeback, he was as frightened as the rest of Hollywood. "When I was 16 or 17 years old and somebody told me about this script, I said, 'Absolutely, no way,'" he admitted. "[Since then] I have grown as I think we all have grown."
Part of his growing up was learning to ignore what people think and pursue quality roles that may challenge public perceptions. While many would be uncomfortable with filming gay love scenes, Gyllenhaal took a pragmatic approach to his on-screen romance. "There are women I've done love scenes with that I'm not very attracted to and then there are women I've done love scenes with that I should probably be a little less attracted to. Yes, [here] it's different obviously. But there's also a weird sense when you're on a set," Gyllenhaal explained. "We just did it. We're all human beings. We all have lips." Gyllenhaal saw the universal humanity in his character and, as a result, this self-professed "city kid" and his Australian co-star believably transformed themselves into young American ranch hands in love and created a heart-breakingly believable film.
The Ice Harvest
While Brokeback Mountain rises above preconceptions of genre by finding the humanity in its character, The Ice Harvest defies categorical distinction-it has elements of noir and comedy but is distinctly neither (see review on page 8). The film's director, Harold Ramis, says that it's the uniqueness of the concept that attracts him to any project. "You don't set out to say, 'Oh, I'm going to make an existential film noir with laughs.' You make the film and the we see what we've made," he said. But, it's difficult to believe that the Caddyshack director didn't anticipate comedy when Bill Murray was hunting through the golf course for a gopher. Rather, The Ice Harvest is an anomaly for Ramis who, with Analyze This, Groundhog Day and the aforementioned Caddyshack on his resume, is the veritable king of broad comedy.
Ice Harvest is a similar departure for the film's star, John Cusack. Typically cast as the "lovable loser," Cusack is Charlie Arglist, a shady mob lawyer who has just stolen $2 million from his even shadier boss. "He's definitely a loser, but I don't know if he's very lovable," said Cusack of his character.
What attracted Cusack to Charlie was that the character could not be summed up by the sort of two-word shorthand usually applied to his roles. "[Charlie]'s been on this slippery slope downward-. Why someone would end up in a strip club in Wichita Falls on Christmas Eve is a philosophically challenging question. They say if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. I don't think Charlie planned to be where he was," Cusack said.
The fact is, no one in the film is provided with a complete back-story, and, far from being a hindrance, the other actors echo Cusack in saying it's what drew them to the project in the first place. "The best combination is when you have a beautifully written script and then we get to fill in all the blanks," said Oliver Platt, who plays Charlie's inebriated best friend Pete. "One of the things I love: we know so little about the scam. There's so little history [on it] and we don't need to know because we know enough. [It is] the same thing about the people."
To a certain degree, the actors should be respected for pursuing a passion project they repeatedly term "beautifully written" and "unique." This especially applies to Cusack, an actor who admits to doing mediocre romantic comedies in order to get films like The Ice Harvest made. "The business is-I'm not bitching about it-but it's very much leverage in order to make movies with no interference the way we had it here," he said.
If nothing else there's still hope. "As long as you're above ground, redemption is an equal opportunity concept," said Cusack of Charlie's eventual fate. The statement similarly applies to the film business. Hollywood tends only to remember an actor's latest project and audiences are forgiving. Whatever expectations were or were not met in Brokeback Mountain and The Ice Harvest, Lee, Ramis, Cusack and Gyllenhaal will soon all be back at work, pursuing new passions and new projects.
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