posted by Scene -- @ 8:26 PM

The Secret Lives of Men
"Brokeback Mountain" and "A History of Violence"

The best part about Brokeback Mountain is not that it deconstructs and completes to its obvious conclusion the homoeroticism of the Western, and of buddy movies in general, but that it reconstructs masculinity in a way that is both touching and tough. The men of Brokeback, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gylennhaal) are far from fey, grunting and mumbling and unloading their fists when they can't find the words. Their sex scenes play like fight scenes, and their fight scenes are heated and sexual.

Heath Ledger especially captures the repressed and confused emotions – at times you can't even understand what the character is saying as much as he himself can't understand what he is trying to say. He explodes kinetically, jumping on Jack and tearing his clothes off, punching a wall violently, drunkenly attacking a man in a car. His urge towards physical action contradicts and perhaps is a symptom of his complacent conservatism. In his own life, he lets sleeping dogs lie. If not for Jack’s insistence on and organization of their many rendezvous, Ennis would prefer to live a simple life devoid of passion and full of honest, quiet work.

The women of Brokeback play the sidelines, confined to traditional roles of femininity. Wives, sisters, mothers, daughters, they hover around the males like satellites, receiving signals but never comprehending them. Michelle Williams’ Alma Del Mar eventually steps up (both actress and character) and rains on the boys’ parade. It’s a forceful performance from a previously vanilla actress. Anne Hathaway also surprises, breaking away from her virginal princess roles, shockingly baring both her intensity and her breasts.

Gylennhaal bridges the gap, playing the rugged romantic who doesn’t understand why things can’t be the way they seem while lying under the stars. Over the span of time the film encompasses, his character seems to age the most, rings growing under his already sunken eyes, and facial hair obscuring his boyishness. Ennis, on the other hand, doesn’t age so much as wilt, hunched over with frustration.

In one scene that brings together these themes of masculinity, Ennis brawls with two bigger guys beneath a fireworks display, the lights popping in the sky like patriotic exclamation points to Ennis’ strikes. In this moment Ennis is as rugged as any western hero, raging against the oafish behaviour that has come to define his gender in this genre and the country it represents. Like any western before it, Brokeback Mountain puts forth a credible archetype of “real man” – restoring the term “real” to its dictionary definition and shrugging off the tired signifiers its carried on its back for too long.

Whereas Brokeback Mountain moves masculinity into the realm of romance, A History of Violence moves in the opposite direction, into the familiar realm of hyper-violence and heterosexuality. The film’s title can refer to any number of things, from the secret past of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), to the past films of director David Cronenberg, to the history of Hollywood or even the United States, and most probably refers to all those things and more.

The history of violence is more than cultural, after all, found in any civilization in any era of history, and found deep within any person no matter how pacifist in creed. Whether it’s mistakenly raising your voice in anger, pragmatically disposing of an enemy, consenting in rough intercourse, or raging back against the schoolyard bully, each degree is explored with the same earnest and urgency by Cronenberg.

Mortensen plays Stall, an All American Father with a beautiful wife and precocious kids. He is a quaint small-business owner, serving coffee, friend to everyone, all sheepish smiles and playful banter. But when some out-of-town late night muggers seize his diner after closing hours, threatening to injure one of his female patrons, Stall jumps into action, skilfully dispatching of his enemies and saving the day.

A media whirlwind ensues and engulfs Stall and his family. He’s not one for the spotlight and does his best to lay low until it all “blows over”. But some shady men catch wind of Stall’s heroism and come snooping around to find out just how and why Tom is so good at killing people. Tom has no answers, or at least, is not willing to give to any.

Ed Harris plays Carl, the lead bad guy with a horribly scarred eye socket. The visible history of violence as read on his face betrays Carl’s calm exterior. He’s too calm, just as Tom is too nice. The violence that is Carl’s and Tom’s (nee, Joey, as Carl insists is Tom’s real name) is chillingly practical, a means to an end. This detached demeanour goes hand in hand with their violence being by far the worst of all the characters’. They actually kill people, and unlike, say, Tom’s son, they show no more remorse other than for how the dead bodies inconvenience them.

Violence is a man’s game here, as Edie Stall’s/Tom’s wife’s (Maria Bello) chapter deals with sex and positioning. Where in her first scene she takes the lead, pleasuring Tom and playing to his fantasies of traditional femininity (a teenage cheerleader), her later scene with “Joey” is rough and jagged, playing perhaps to her fantasies of traditional masculinity. By the later scenes and expositions of violence, her character, and indeed all females, are absent from the film. Whether the film can only see women through sexuality, motherhood or victimization, or is in fact merely acknowledging that this is the traditional viewpoint of Hollywood, is regretfully unclear.

Mortensen skilfully switches from Tom to Joey, the difference being as slight as adjusting the enunciation of his words. The question arises as to whether a person can really change, or do actions of the past stay with and define you forever. Mortensen makes a strong case that you can indeed become a different person, though eerily so. Tom’s compartmentalization of his actions and abilities into two separate people is not well received by his family -- Edie wretches in the bathroom when she first hears him refer to Joey in the third person.

Like Spike Jonze’s Adaptation before it, A History of Violence unfortunately and yet necessarily becomes the film it is dissecting. The third act transforms into an all-male action flick, and when by its conclusion it tries again to reorganize its characters and aesthetic into a “normal” domestic setting, the result is uneasy and appropriately forced.

Jef.Catapang