Gyllenhaal Rocks
23 January

There were problems at work.

Kamal phoned in sick and we were stretched for cover in the training rooms. So, I went into work on Monday afternoon after attending a reiki session in the morning. And then, to balance things out, I took the Tuesday afternoon off.

And, in complete decadence, I went to the cinema.

Ross had been quite clear that he did not want to see Jarhead so I went on my own. Tuesday turned out to be half price day which was a bonus.

What can I say? Well, it's a very well crafted film. There are some stunning images although I though the scenes with the burning oil wells looked very indoors and studio-bound. It gets across well the point that war is mostly complete boredom followed by short periods of extreme emotion. It's also very clear that modern warfare is rarely fought by infantrymen and that the training they receive no longer accords with the technology which is always twenty miles ahead of them.

So, why am I not sounding more enthusiastic? Well, to be perfectly honest, though very well-meaning, the film was boring. It's a non-action action film and, whilst that's very laudible, it's difficult to warm to. I'm sure it's very well researched and everything that can be accurate is accurate but it's really a film about the military delivered by someone who has absolutely no point of emotional or experiential contact with the military. Too intellectual, Mr Mendes.

So, it was really good that Jake got his arse out for us. But, even so, I can't summon up more than two stars.

That weekend we both went to see the film of the moment - Brokeback Mountain. We were both highly impressed. So, let's say straight way that this was a five star experience. It really didn't feel like an American film at all. The underplaying, the emotional reticence, the things left unsaid, all of these felt like the product of a far more European sensibility.

And I found it had so many resonances. Yes, it was the story of a mostly unrequited love between two men in a particular society at a particular moment in time. And that struck chords with me about my own early life. At aged sixteen/seventeen, well aware that I was looking at my own classmates in ways that they wouldn't necessarily encourage, I thought that my life would be to meet a girl and settle down and produce children. My model was my own parents and every other set of parents around me. The world wasn't full of positive alternatives. I understood the ache and the fear inside those two men.

But the very specificity of the story also allows it to be universal. It's not just a gay love story. It's about the impossibility of keeping secrets. It's about finding accommodations. It's about finding ways of trying to live with what you can't fix. It's about the cost of living with your actions. It's about the issues of how you live with some modicum of integrity in a society which tells you that being you is wrong (and that could be being a Protestant during the reign of Bloody Mary or a Jew in Nazi Germany or black in 1950s Alabama).

And I've found that many people wanted to talk about the film. Did Jack's father-in-law organise for him to be killed? How much did his wife really know or guess? Why did Ennis not leave the prairies when he could? How many straight friends will cancel their annual hunting and fishing trips this autumn?

So, a magnificent achievement. Probably already my film of the year and certainly the best film that I have seen in a long time; the one that has resonated with me for longest.

I'm interested to see that Heath Ledger went on from this film to star in Casanova whilst Jake went straight into Jarhead. Whilst happy as professional actors to play the roles of two men in love, it's almost as though they had to compensate some how.

For Jake, I really do think that, as well as being cuteness on a stick, it does show what an accomplished screen actor he is turning into. The camera lens likes him to be sure; but he also has the quality of all great screen actors of simply being able to be in front of the camera and not to act (in the theatrical sense) at all.