Amoeba Music

When you find yourself a fan of a certain actor or filmmaker, isn't it great when you're actually alive at the turning point in their careers? Sounds like a simple and/or silly statement but I, for one, seem to come across the majority of filmmakers and stars late in their careers or after their deaths, which makes accessing their movies a real pain sometimes. When it comes to Ang Lee, I was always impressed by his universal characters and themes. Eat Drink Man Woman is one of the strongest dark comedies from East Asia that I've seen in a while. Likewise, I'd been following the careers of Ledger (Monster's Ball, The Dark Knight) and Williams (Dawson's Creek, Blue Valentine) for some time. The news of them acting in the same film was very exciting, as was the addition of Gyllenhaal and Hathaway, both of whom I'd seen around, but not enough of. When I discovered that the plot circulated two gay lovers, I was a little reluctant. I'd seen The Wedding Banquet, another of Lee's films with a gay theme, and thought that it would be similar. Not that the mentioned film is a bad one, but its execution was very exclusive to a gay male audience, and people who enjoy your typical drama. Most dramas don't exactly move me. In the very least, I think it helps to have been in a similar situation with the characters in the film. Regardless of my feelings, Lee is a director that I like, so I went to see Brokeback Mountain on its opening weekend. From start to finish, I was transfixed and truly unprepared for the experience.

Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are two strangers looking for work. Ennis is a ranch hand and young Jack is a rodeo enthusiast who rides occasionally. Though both have little to no experience with jobs of great complexity, they meet for the first time and find themselves accepting a job herding sheep across a mountain. Their boss Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) has little patience with his new employees and gives them a little rundown before sending them off to a task that will stretch across several seasons. The two men are exact opposites and find it difficult to relate. Ennis is reserved, quiet, and practical. His only interest is getting the job done well and returning home to his fiance. Jack is loudmouthed and chatty, and certainly more friendly than Ennis. This part of the film is considerably slower, taking its time to reveal the mountain terrain of Wyoming. That calm is disrupted when the food rations they collect, which consist mainly of beans and soup, grow tiresome, and the weather changes from summer to fall, then a harsh winter. The two men socialize, but don't exactly grow close; eventually the job requires that they distance themselves and watch over the mass herd from different areas. One night they decide to stay together on the camp and end up having sex. The morning after brings about denial and mixed feelings between them, but regardless, a bittersweet romance ensues. At the end of their job, the two part on bad terms and try to go about their lives.

So, I'll go ahead and use a fussy distinction, and call Jonathan Demme's film cinéma direct, rather than cinéma vérité, since it calls more attention to its subject than itself. It's grueling enough to deserve the three accent marks, however. Unlike the use of the shaky-cam in Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, Demme and his cinematographer, Declan Quinn, always keep the camera in the objective, 3rd-person tense. They also, thankfully, keep it more transparent than Paul Greengrass's more navel-gazing camera eye. While moving room to room, the audience floats along, but when the wedding party guests are talking, the filmmakers fix the shot, remembering that modern cameras can re-focus on stuff in the background without having to move. Whatever you call it, Rachel Getting Married is realism at its squirm-inducing most direct.

Jenny Lumet's script rarely hits a wrong note in analyzing a particular bourgeois Connecticut family's power struggles that are inherent to most families. Whereas my family get-togethers center on frito-pie and football, Rachel's wedding involves Indian attire and cuisine with Robyn Hitchcock and Cyro Baptista supplying the entertainment. All attention is being paid to Rachel (Rosemary DeWitt) until her younger sister, Kym (Anne Hathaway), shows up with a weekend pass from court-mandated rehab. What follows is the gentrified version of the Electra Complex. The sisters compete for attention from Dad (Bill Irwin) using what they have: Rachel is the perfect daughter with some undefined perfect job, perfect friends (successful musicians and writers) and a perfect fiancé, whereas Kym is the classic second-child fuckup, with drug addiction being her calling card.