Brokeback
Nation
I rarely go to
movies. If enough people tell me a movie is worth seeing I'll eventually go see
it, or watch it on DVD. I do skim the weekly film reviews in the newspaper. So
it was last winter that I ran across reviews of an obscure new film showing in
a small theater in my area. This movie was said to be "a love-story which
shatters the last of the old taboos." The New Yorker review which soon followed make more sense, so after
some prayer and with trepidation I recently took in this 2 hour 20 minute film
on a Saturday afternoon accompanied by a good friend of mine.
New Yorker
Review
BROKE
BACK MOUNTAIN: In the summer of 1963, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack
Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) herd the sheep on Brokeback Mountain, in Wyoming, and
fall in love. Ang Lee's movie traces the ups and downs of that love over many
years, making it clear that the downs are fared to outnumber the ups. The film
has a curious motion to begin with, managing to seem at once hectic and
sluggish; once the heroes start to grow up, however, and thus to struggle
against their feelings, the story comes painfully alive, and the performances
stretch toward the tragic. There is fine support from Anne Hathaway and
Michelle Wilhams as the baffled wives of the two men, but the picture belongs
to Ledger, whose downcast gaze and chewed-up words bear almost unbearable
testimony to a heart under siege. Any attempt to promote this as an issue
movie, gripped by an agenda, feels badly misplaced; the only issue here is the oldest
and most sorrowful one of all. -- Anthony Lane, 12/05/05.
The scenery is
gripping--the setting in Wyoming 1963 is not culturally very far from my own
growing-up years in Idaho. I know what cowboys are like. We Idahoans don't open
up and share our feelings or our fears. It just isn't done. Many people I grew
up among endured bad marriages, their kids grow up alone having been told that
little children are "to be seen but not heard." Life was tough and could
be incredibly boring. Idaho culture as I remember it as a boy was flat. For me,
I seemed to always be desperately lonely.
Right near the
end of the film it suddenly occurred to me that this film was not about love in
any legitimate form. It was about a total absence of real love in a culture--from start to finish. Could this movie
have inadvertently portrayed our current American society more closely than I
had dared to imagine?
I was overcome
with pain and sadness before the movie ended--and soon in tears. Everyone in
this film was lost--hopelessly so. I knew what the answer was. All the characters
in the film, not just the lead cowboys, need massive doses of the love that comes
only from Jesus. Agape is the kind of self-giving compassionate love God
designed societies to operate on. But no one in this film had any real
connection to God, apparently. I got the feeling the tacit assumption that
lovelessness was the normal state of affairs--the way things have always been
and always will be. Ennis and Ledger had grown up without fathers and had never
known a real friendship. Had raw eros not seized them and taken them captive--surely it was
a strong demon--they could have become life-long friends and the whole movie
would have been a different story. As it was, Ennis and Jack did not know how
to love each other as brothers, they knew nothing about loving their wives nor
their children. Having never really felt acceptance and unconditional love, how
could they be expected to know how to love anyone?
My movie companion,
Matt, counted six subtle messages to Jesus during the film, surely not intended
by the producers, but nevertheless the answer was there for those with ears to
hear. I immediately knew that Jesus was in this film but not in the way anyone
intended.
My greatest pain
in the movie was seeing Ennis' and Jack's children growing up on their own,
unguided and unloved, just the same way their parents had grown up, only worse.
Obviously the wives had suffered the devastating loss of husbands who should
have been responsible fathers and husbands--rooted enough in God to love their
own wives as their own selves--the ground rules for marriage as spelled out in
Ephesians.
I can not imagine
anyone using this film to legitimize the acting out of homosexual desires.
God's abiding anger--commonly called His wrath--"rests" on all who do not know Him. God hates hypocrisy. He hates divorce. Homosexual acts are personally unspeakably
repugnant to Him. Yet, our Lord Jesus is kind and patient and
merciful hoping that a few will be willing to receive His love and be made
whole. "Do you not know that God's kindness is meant to lead you to
repentance?" Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans.
I could see that
life's consequence engine was running full tilt through this all too real film
of our great American tragedy. Sexual sin devastates individuals and families
and wrecks a society. With regard to sex, love, marriage, and friendship I
think our American society is just about Dead Broke right now. I wish someone
would prove me wrong.
I am certain the
writer of the original New Yorker (very) short story, Annie Proulx, the Screen Player
writers, Larry McCurty and Dianna Ossana, the very fine director Ang Lee, the
actors, the producers, all intended for the movie to convey a different set of
values to their audience than what I saw in this powerful motion picture. (The
sound track is very well done. I bought the CD but I can only play it when I am
alone because when I listen to it, the tears all come flooding back all over
again--many weeks later).
Some years ago I
remember a remark by Ray Stedman about modern movies. Ray said he felt God
often used totally secular films to prepare the world for what would soon we
coming down the pike in real life. Ray and I were talking about Science Fiction
films at the time, but Brokeback Mountain hit me dead center. I think we all
live in Brokeback Nation. This film may not have been intended to be a warning
message from God of impending judgment on us all--but that is what it said to
me.
It is painful to
live in a society full of likeable people one can easily identify with. It is
painful to be unable to affect a change in all these lost people who bear the
image of God and whose sins have already been paid for in full. If only they
knew that! If only someone could go and convince them. Each would blossom and
be fulfilled if only they could be put in touch with Jesus. (God is not a respecter of persons--as far as I could tell
everyone depicted in this movie was desperately in need of God's compassionate
love and mercy).
I thought about
the actors and actresses in this film as well. The fame and financial reward of
notable actors these days makes it even less likely they will ever come to know
God. The parts the cast members played were well-played, but so what? Well-known
actors and "stars" never seem to be able to live lives of their own.
Who are they as real people? We can never know. We treat them like gods and
goddesses and deities--and so they need no redemption. Will any of them ever
find the fulfillment that knowing Jesus brings? "God does not desire than
anyone should perishÉ"
Jerusalem 586
BC
There was a time
in history past when God wiped out most of his chosen people Israel in the
siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. This was God judging His own
people--those who professed to know Him--not the pagans. Dealing with the
pagans would come later.
Jeremiah the
prophet was chosen to represent God for more than 40 years while living in
Jerusalem through the whole ordeal. Daniel and Ezekiel with a tiny few
survivors--a remnant--were safely carted off to Babylon in advance.
While he was in
detainment camp outside Babylon, teaching and shepherding the few thousand
exiled people in his care, Ezekiel was visited by The Angel of the Lord (a theophany, most likely the preincarnate Son of God). The Angel
took Ezekiel in a great vision for a personal tour of the temple and the city.
The time was September 592, six years before the actual Fall of the city. After
showing Ezekiel the idolatrous conditions in Solomon's once great Temple, the
Angel of the Lord called for a recording angel to travel throughout Jerusalem
and mark on the forehead every person who "sighed and groaned" over
all the abominations going on there. These who wept were the protected few who
would survive the coming judgment on the city.
Next the Lord
called for six destroying angels who were instructed, "Pass through the
city after him, and smite; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no
pity; slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women,
but touch no one upon whom is the mark. And begin at my sanctuary."
Josephus
described the subsequent 18-month siege by Nebuchadnezzar when the city was indeed
leveled and everyone slain except the few who had been invisibly marked by
God's recording angel. (See http://ldolphin.org/ezekiel/ezekiel4.html for details)
God must judge
sin. He allows no nation, no people, to go on living generation after
generation in life styles that openly defy Him. We are all houseguests on a
great Estate owned by an absent Landlord who is also the Heir of everything.
That the Landlord will be returning very soon to claim His inheritance, should
be evident to all who will open their eyes and see.
Notice from the
example of Jerusalem that God judges His own people first--then He judges those
who refuse His grace and mercy. The Apostle Peter wrote,
"For
the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins
with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?
Now "If the righteous one is scarcely saved, Where will the ungodly and
the sinner appear?" (1 Peter 4:17-19)
Christians, in my
opinion, really have no business heaping condemnation and scorn and ridicule on
the sinners of this world! God does not expect moral behavior out of people who
do not have the inner spiritual resources to meet His standards. People who are
lost don't even know they are lost until someone in mercy wakes them up.
"Jesus
went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching
the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among
the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for
them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples,
"The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. "Therefore
pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest."
(Matthew 9:35-38)
Words failed me
after watching Brokeback Mountain. It was a time of tears and sorrow for the
lost of my generation. I love my country and I remember the good things about
life in the United States half a century ago. These better days are all almost gone
now. By this film I was deeply shaken at the
realization once more of the lavish doses of the unmerited, undeserved grace of
God I have been given. But, it is very painful to see so many around me being
left behind.
Jesus wept over
Jerusalem. Should we not weep over our land and people?
Lambert Dolphin
lambert@ldolphin.org
http://ldolphin.org/