We’ve got us a brand-new series! How often does that happen? Well, pretty often, but that’s part of the magic! This week, we’re kicking off our series “Didn’t Win. Didn’t Win. Didn’t Win” where we discuss movies that seemed like a lock for the Best Picture Oscar but instead were cruelly and viciously stomped upon by some other film that took their statue, stole their lunch money, and made fun of them at recess. That’s how the Academy works; don’t dispute me! Our first nominee is 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain,” a beautiful and heartbreaking story of love, social expectations, toxic masculinity, and a bunch of other stuff that I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING SHUT UP! Sure, this movie is terrific, but was its Oscar loss understandable? Or were there . . . other factors (I’m looking at you, Illuminati!)
Poll question: what’s your favorite filmic love story?
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Brokeback Mountain is a truly great film, it could have got backlash from the gay community because of the killing of the more comfortable in his sexuality gay character. It’s was true until very recently a gay character has to die before the end of the story for it to be “acceptable” but this film really manages to go beyond tropes and instead gave the public a truly relatable love story between two men that I think opened the public to the idea that gay people are just people. It’s hard to imagine how heartless one would have to be to not cry at the end. A rare masterpiece of a film that goes right to the heart.
I want to avoid other tragic love stories for my favourite so I am going with Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain where a true oddball character does truly bizzarre things to get the attention of a boy she fancies and he isn’t any less an oddball in the end. The film is FANTASTIC, funny and at the end i felt my heart grew three sizes that day. The lead, Audrey Tautou, was in another film by the same director Un long dimanche de fiançailles which is aso quite the love story but deals with some pretty serious stuff as a girl with consequences from polio during WW1 is told her fiancé has been killed but instead finds him. I won’t spoil it but it’s a sad yet somehow hopeful film with a scene so horrifying in the trenches no one I saw the film with slept for well for days after seeing it.
I love “Brokeback,” which you might know by now if you’ve already listened to the episode. Yes, it does kill off one of the members of a gay couple but I don’t think that was quite the trope it is now when they made it. And yes, foremost, they’re people, they’re not extravagant, over the top caricatures. Two men looking for meaning and comfort. And, let’s face it; us gay folk do LOVE our drama!
As for this Audrey Tautou film you mention, I think I’ll avoid it so I can sleep for the next three days, though I appreciate your telling us about it! 😀 Thanks, Vince!
Def see Amelie though! It is magic!
I have! Saw it in the theater when it came out, went and bought the DVD soon after and never opened it. Why? No idea. It was a lovely film.