brokeback mountain redux

Totally ditto what Em said about this flick:

"people are calling this the ultimate love story; to me it was the ultimate summer camp love story. you know how you're thrust together with strangers in a totally unfamiliar setting and you're with them day and night and night and day and you can't help but fall in love... partly with the person, but partly with the place itself. bryan bowers sings a song about the phenomenon entitled "that old demon festival love." i think one reason they lasted so long despite the conflict, fear, guilt and secrecy is because they had to keep going back to summer camp to see each other. it simplified things; no kids, no in-laws, no day to day responsibilities.

i don't say this judgmentally, because they really had no good choices (and poor ennis was doomed from the start to never take a risk in love, ever), and i don't say it to undermine the authenticity of their feelings for each other. when jack says "all we got is brokeback mountain," i think he means it more profoundly than bogart's "we'll always have paris." they'd spent decades loving each other, but while they'd grown up and built lives for themselves, none of it was allowed to enter their relationship, so ultimately there was nothing in the relationship to hang on to. there was nothing to show for it but a couple of bloodstained shirts (from brokeback) and a postcard (of brokeback). if i'd saved the letters from my first summer camp love, jake huebner, who soaked his letters in cologne and said to me, honest to god, "we'll always have paris," i'd have as much to show for that fling as they had for their lifetime devotion.

what a fucking waste.

i'm tempted to go into a long blah blah blah about marginalization of sexual minorities, but that would be boring and wouldn't really add much. it's just a fucking waste, is all."

Word.