Who can blame Brokeback Mountain's director Ang Lee for being a little disappointed at not getting the Best Picture Oscar. I would be too. But he accepted it philosophically.
[...]feeling disappointed "is human nature. And it wasn't for myself. I led a whole team of people."
Meanwhile, Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Brokeback short story, lambasts the Academy for being insular and incestuous.
We should have known conservative heffalump academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver.
In the meantime, the backlash carries on from both sides.
"[...]we've gotten more than 1,000 responses from people who are outraged that we gave 'Brokeback Mountain' anything at all."
Those responses, [says Bruce Davis, Executive Administrator of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences], have come not from academy members, but from "all over the place. From red states, I betcha. I understand that some people are upset that 'Brokeback Mountain' didn't win best picture, but our perspective has been colored by this onslaught from people who didn't want to see it nominated, much less win anything.
"It's a perfect no-win situation for the academy. Some people are condemning us for not giving the film our highest award, and many, many more are condemning us for giving it anything."
If I hadn't already seen it, the sheer divisiveness of the film would surely pique my interest. This film, like Gibson's Passion, must be saying something significant, whether I agree with it or not, though Mr. Lee would beg to differ.
In other Ang Lee news:
- His high-flying wuxia epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will be coming to a stage near you.
- Expect also to see the other books (Crouching Tiger is the number four) of Wang Du Lu's pentalogy coming to the silver screen, courtesy of the Weinsteins, with Lee directing (if Harv has his way).
- Ang Lee will not be directing a Dusty Springfield bio-pic. Lee quashed rumors of Charlize Theron starring, with Kate Moss as her (and this is news to me) lesbian lover.
I also wish Ang Lee had been able to convince people that Brokeback wasn't meant to be a statement about homosexuality. If people hadn't been expecting two watch two hours of clear, moral message, maybe there wouldn't have been those complaints about how it's wrong for gay men to cheat on their spouses.
I just have a problem with that specific criticism since it makes it sound like the story would be better if the characters were comfortable enough about their preferences to just forego all pretenses of heterosexuality. Would there even be much of a plot left if that were the case?