Brokeback Day!

So... most of y'all reading this site, that I know of, are not in NYC or LA... so it isn't Brokeback day for you. But here in NYC, tis for me, and I am practically foaming at the mouth. And I'm not even seeing it again, for the second time (my first review here), until tomorrow. But just knowing that people are finally getting to see this wonderful film now makes me a happy boy.

Stephen Holden's review in the NY Times today made me cry all over again. Read it. Here's the end, which broke me down:

"Yet Brokeback Mountain is ultimately not about sex (there is very little of it in the film) but about love: love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in the heart.

Or, as Ms. Proulx writes, 'What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.'

One tender moment's reprieve from loneliness can illuminate a life."

I hope that everyone does go and see this film. On the subway this morning there was someone reading one of the free give-away newspapers we get handed in the stations, and at the top banner saying what was inside the newspaper there was a pic of Heath and Jake looking at each other for the review, and underneath that the top headline in big letters was "NYC Appeals-Court Nixes Gay Marriage" - an unsubtle juxtaposition to be sure, but it really drives home how important this film is. That general sentiment still seems to be that gay people's love is inferior or, more likely by most, that there is no such thing as gay love at all.

A film is only a film and only so important in the big scheme, but if it changes a couple of people's minds than it's so much more important than most, and this film is a film that can do it. This is a film that strives for and succeeds in showing homophobia the door.

Now if only we could get the bigots to actually sit and watch it. And with an open mind, at that. I know, I know - I may as well turn water into wine. Yet they'd believe that shit.