hemingway, brokeback, and the true ideal of adventure

Brokeback Mountain's success lies in its Hemingwayesque depiction of its characters. When you look at these two gay cowboys you see that their tragic flaw is that they are unable to think outside of their own silly little worldviews. This is epitomized by one scence in particular: when Heath Ledger's character, Ennis Del Mar, starts talking about his paranoia of being seen for what he was. He tells Gyllenhal's character how he walks down the street and starts thinking that everybody knows that he's queer. It never crosses his mind he shouldn't give a fuck what people think, or that he should maybe get the hell out of small town Bible belt America. Like old Anselmo in For Whom the Bell Tolls, he takes a stoic view towards life and just holds on as hard as he can to the only life he knows.
Clearly Ang Lee, Larry McMurtry and E. Annie Proulx (who wrote the short story the movie is based on) know what they are doing. This is a comment on the way most people are in America or anywhere else. There's a very small amount of people in this world who are willing to demand change from the world or who are able to abandon the life they're used to. Ennis Del Mar epitomizes the average American, who lives within 50 miles of where he was raised. Del Mar won't even leave shitty ass Wyoming for the (barely) greener pastures of Texas.
But this is not neccessarily a negative comment on normal folks; instead, it is reality. You'd think being a cowboy, especially a gay one, would be a big fucking adventure. But Brokeback Mountain shows us how fucking boring it is. Del Mar doesn't speak a fucking word, and although I like him because he's a badass, I can't imagine spending five minutes with him. Perhaps that's the point: if you had to spend all day with someone who just didn't speak a word, or at most two sentences in barely incomprehensible cowboy-soeak, you'd fuck them too just for some excitement.
It the final analysis it comes down to this: Brokeback Mountain doesn't try to enforce some weird postmodern worldview on its audience. It portrays life as it is, at least for a lot of people. Sometimes it's nice to get past all of that Magnolia and Eternal Sunshine postmodern "what does life mean anyway?" bullshit and watch a movie about real people. It's not just about rural america or blue collar people, anyway; it's about the fact that we all have weird issues that we can't get past and how they end up fucking us in the end. That's greek tragedy shit.

Just one more thought: Ang Lee also directed The Hulk and Running Dragon, Crouching Tiger or whatever the fuck it was called. Does anyone see any continuity here? This guy must be unstable.