Invisible Monsters...

I loved Brokeback Mountain and was surprised to hear that Crash beat it at the Screen Actors Guild awards. Then again maybe the award 'best ensemble cast' didn't quite fit Brokeback. It after all being a two man show with some great supporting work, but it's a far superior movie to Crash which was problematic and predictable in places (although Matt Dillon in this and Factotum was incredible...) Anyway let's get back to the mountain.

Ang Lee's film was breathtaking in both scope and look and while it's garnered enough praise to award it instant classic status, the critics are overlooking one thing. It's a love story, it's a Western, but (and bare with me here) it's a hell of a werewolf movie too.

"Where was the werewolf?" one of my editors asked me a few nights ago as I put this to him over a glass of wine. "There's no werewolf...".

"Exactly," I said. "Exactly".

Let's go back to Spartacus for a moment. Cast your mind back to the following exchange between Crassus and Antoninus:

Do you eat oysters?
When I have them, master.
Do you eat snails?
No, master.
Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?
No, master.
Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it?
Yes, master.
And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals.
It could be argued so, master.
My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters.

If you do remember that scene it's because you saw the restored version. The original cut expelled it - in fact although it was shot the sound was lost (perhaps never recorded at all) and it was left to Anthony Hopkins to voice Laurence Olivier's lines while the much older Tony Curtis repeated his own some thirty years on. Hollywood has never rested easy with onscreen tom-on-tomfoolery. The only way for a savvy director and/or writer to get something similar on screen was to hide it - not that you had to be particularly subtle as not much fuss was kicked up by Peter Lorre stroking his walking stick in front of Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. Try and watch it now without spotting the homoerotic overtones.

For my sins I can't watch Brokeback Mountain without seeing similar lycanthropic undertones. But don't listen to me, here's the most important line in the film straight from the horse rider's mouth. Ladies and gentleman, Mr Ennis Del Mar:

"The bottom line is... we're around each other and this thing grabs hold of us again in the wrong place and the wrong time then we're dead."

Now you may want to read that as Ennis simply talking about the love that he feels for Jack that binds and ultimately breaks him. That's cool, if a little simplistic, because they sure do have a heap of feelings to work through over the years, but I put it to you that "this thing" up there on Brokeback is hairier than both of them put together.

While the rest of the audience was crying softly over the tragic love story I was on the edge of my seat as each year the two men set off again to try and finally bring the werewolf down. Of course they never had a use for the fishing tackle... who has time to fish when you're fighting tooth and claw with a moon cursed monster? They barely had time to fuck. It's no wonder they sought solace in each others arms. Who else would understand or even believe in the thing that they were facing up there? I mean I can tell I'm already losing a few of you...

So why would Ang Lee hide the 'star' of his film? Well for one thing arthouse cinema isn't known for its all embracing love of horror mythology so he obviously thought it best to squirrel away the beast and infer its presence instead. This is beautiful as never revealing the monster leaves it up to the audience's imagination rather than rendering it with soon outdated CGI (sheep are easier to animate realistically than werewolves) or putting Randy Quaid in a wolf suit. There's also the stigma of his last genre outing, Hulk, for which he was burned badly. I expect one day for him to oversee a director's cut of that film in which all visual evidence of Bruce Banner's alter ego is similarly erased. Finally the film can then reach a larger arthouse audience as simply a story about a man battling with his id. No wonder after his dalliance with monsters he preferred to keep them offscreen this time out.*

Whatever the reason though it's a hell of a horror flick. Been a while since I saw two men so determined to face down the unspeakable and perhaps sacrifice themselves for an uncaring community that knows nothing of their heroism:

Ennis: It's a one-shot thing we got goin' on here.
Jack: Ain't nobody's business but ours.

Maybe with time and a change in attitudes we can look forward to the liberal arthouse community allowing those of us who have a need for bloodthirsty lycanthropy in our movies to get to see our kind of action on the big screen bathed in falling moon light. Until then we're forced to sit in the dark interpreting the shadows, but when it's done as well as Brokeback I won't complain too much.

* although I did hear a rumour that he asked Nick Nolte to stay overnight on the mountain to get into character. Nolte being Nolte immediately turned feral leaving Lee with no choice but to go with Randy Quaid. Nolte is still up there living on backpackers and his own urine.

[Music: At the Drive In]