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lobelia321Last night I went to the cinema and I saw Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto. Now, on the one hand, it puzzles me a lot that Brokeback Mountain was lauded all over my Friends page and reviewed and iconed (including by yours so very truly -- what's the fun in life if one cant' be a lemming?) and that I heard about Breakfast on Pluto for the first time via a cinema trailer ten days ago when I was seeing Brokeback Mountain. And on the other hand, I am not puzzled because a) Hollywood continueth to rule the world (which sometimes annoys me more than at other times), and b) Annie Proulx's fic is slashy while Breakfast on Pluto is not.
Why am I talking about both these films in the same post? Perhaps because they're the two films I've seen most recently in the cinema. But also because they share, in the wider sense, a theme: both are based on published texts (although I have not read Patrick McCabe's autobiographical book); both are about men who like men; both are about men who don't fit into the society they're born into; both have pretty actors in them. Both warm the slasher's heart because we slashers -- or maybe I should say: I slasher -- will take our men-on-men love wherever we can find it. It's kind of pure and undistilled here on LJ in ficform but the big cinema screen adds a lush sensuality and why not take my men in distilled, cocktail-mixed, shaken-and-stirred form as well as in the pure variety?
Anyway, Breakfast on Pluto and why I liked it, and how it does some things better than Brokeback Mountain:
Brokeback Mountain has some pretty men in it, in particular Jake Gyllenhaal. I previously aired my views on beauty in BBM. I was sorry that the medium of film did not allow for the cowboys to be less handsome. Now, in BoP, the central boy, played by Cillian Murphy, is ethereally beautiful. But that beauty makes sense because the film is about the fragility of identity in a world that is full of hostile realities and violence, and the unearthly beauty of Cillian Murphy is a metaphor for that. It also makes the scenes where violence is done to the beauty terribly poignant and almost physically difficult to watch. So the beauty stands in for something larger than itself, and that is a wonderful way of using beauty in film. It's also a particular beauty, not a manly, rugged beauty (and therefore not a slashy beauty) but an angelic beauty. The main character, Patrick Kitten Braden, is like a holy fool, an innocent who shows up the corruption but also the best sides of society by making people react to him in various ways.
I am not surprised that the one film (BBM) that has some success with a gay theme in Hollywood / mainstream cinema is a film in which homosexuality is punished. It's the decade-old Hollywood adage: bad guys get punished, femmes fatales get killed in bathtubs, poofs get beaten to death with crowbars -- so it's okay to show them at it. (Ditto Philadelphia Story: gay guy must die. Or, if appearing in cameo roles with Julia Roberts: gay guy must not have debauched sex with lots of anuses but be caring, loving, cuddly, straight-looking, straight-acting girlfriend-substitute -- that is, be gay in name only and have his claws clipped.) ETA: Midnight Cowboy!! (Dustin dies.)
What I liked about Breakfast on Pluto is that the central boy is, despite his fragility, also very tough. He is not punished for his love of dresses and men. He never changes his spots, he remains true to himself and to his friends all the way through. He doesn't cave in, and there are several scenes where it is suggested that he will die rather than give in -- because he is, in a way, unable to give in. The struggle to find his identity (he is a transvestite) has been too hard-won to give it up. So a lot of horrible bad things happen, much worse than anything that happens to the cowboys in Wyoming, but he survives. And I like that. A film that is positive about identity and the weirdnesses of human sexualities and loves.
The film is also tremendously funny. I laughed out loud several times, and it's a wonderful Anglo-Irish thing that some films can pull off that combines gritty political realism with light-hearted comedy. And, in this case, also pure camp. Some of it reminded me of Velvet Goldmine in its campiness (another film that is not, I hasten to add, slashy at all but we take our men where we can find them, see above).
I also liked the music a lot! A lot of great 1970s stuff. And I liked the way it was filmed, very taut, with surprising angles, tightly edited, and a great pair of red robins who flutter about and tweet at each other and whose cheeky dialogues are subtitled. A rich textured surface and juicy sound.
I loved The Crying Game for all the same reasons (but hated End of the Affair so Neil Jordan is not 100 per cent reliable).
Why am I talking about both these films in the same post? Perhaps because they're the two films I've seen most recently in the cinema. But also because they share, in the wider sense, a theme: both are based on published texts (although I have not read Patrick McCabe's autobiographical book); both are about men who like men; both are about men who don't fit into the society they're born into; both have pretty actors in them. Both warm the slasher's heart because we slashers -- or maybe I should say: I slasher -- will take our men-on-men love wherever we can find it. It's kind of pure and undistilled here on LJ in ficform but the big cinema screen adds a lush sensuality and why not take my men in distilled, cocktail-mixed, shaken-and-stirred form as well as in the pure variety?
Anyway, Breakfast on Pluto and why I liked it, and how it does some things better than Brokeback Mountain:
Brokeback Mountain has some pretty men in it, in particular Jake Gyllenhaal. I previously aired my views on beauty in BBM. I was sorry that the medium of film did not allow for the cowboys to be less handsome. Now, in BoP, the central boy, played by Cillian Murphy, is ethereally beautiful. But that beauty makes sense because the film is about the fragility of identity in a world that is full of hostile realities and violence, and the unearthly beauty of Cillian Murphy is a metaphor for that. It also makes the scenes where violence is done to the beauty terribly poignant and almost physically difficult to watch. So the beauty stands in for something larger than itself, and that is a wonderful way of using beauty in film. It's also a particular beauty, not a manly, rugged beauty (and therefore not a slashy beauty) but an angelic beauty. The main character, Patrick Kitten Braden, is like a holy fool, an innocent who shows up the corruption but also the best sides of society by making people react to him in various ways.
I am not surprised that the one film (BBM) that has some success with a gay theme in Hollywood / mainstream cinema is a film in which homosexuality is punished. It's the decade-old Hollywood adage: bad guys get punished, femmes fatales get killed in bathtubs, poofs get beaten to death with crowbars -- so it's okay to show them at it. (Ditto Philadelphia Story: gay guy must die. Or, if appearing in cameo roles with Julia Roberts: gay guy must not have debauched sex with lots of anuses but be caring, loving, cuddly, straight-looking, straight-acting girlfriend-substitute -- that is, be gay in name only and have his claws clipped.) ETA: Midnight Cowboy!! (Dustin dies.)
What I liked about Breakfast on Pluto is that the central boy is, despite his fragility, also very tough. He is not punished for his love of dresses and men. He never changes his spots, he remains true to himself and to his friends all the way through. He doesn't cave in, and there are several scenes where it is suggested that he will die rather than give in -- because he is, in a way, unable to give in. The struggle to find his identity (he is a transvestite) has been too hard-won to give it up. So a lot of horrible bad things happen, much worse than anything that happens to the cowboys in Wyoming, but he survives. And I like that. A film that is positive about identity and the weirdnesses of human sexualities and loves.
The film is also tremendously funny. I laughed out loud several times, and it's a wonderful Anglo-Irish thing that some films can pull off that combines gritty political realism with light-hearted comedy. And, in this case, also pure camp. Some of it reminded me of Velvet Goldmine in its campiness (another film that is not, I hasten to add, slashy at all but we take our men where we can find them, see above).
I also liked the music a lot! A lot of great 1970s stuff. And I liked the way it was filmed, very taut, with surprising angles, tightly edited, and a great pair of red robins who flutter about and tweet at each other and whose cheeky dialogues are subtitled. A rich textured surface and juicy sound.
I loved The Crying Game for all the same reasons (but hated End of the Affair so Neil Jordan is not 100 per cent reliable).
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 07:05 pm (UTC)*drops yoghurty spoon on lap*
b.x :/
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:05 pm (UTC)Not that I don't love it with a lust born of a slasher's heart and watched it obsessively when it was first foisted upon me by fellow LJers two years ago. And not that it hasn't got bits that a slasher can glom onto!! But it's the glomming that is slashy, not the film itself.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:26 pm (UTC)there's someone - jube?? - who has the theory that vg is actually the ultimate marty-sue, and i have to say i think i'm in agreement with that.
b.x :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:28 pm (UTC)b.x ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-17 02:58 am (UTC)VG is often described as RPS about David Bowie and Iggy Pop. And I couldn't agree more that Arthur Stuart is very blatantly Marty-Stu.
Granted, Brian/Curt doesn't really take up the majority of screen time but it is very obviously slash. And it's because it's become slash that it can't be called "slashy" any more, isn't that right?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-22 09:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-22 09:43 pm (UTC)I posted this in reply to someone called
But if they're doing the same thing, they're doing the same thing.
Oh yes, this is basically what I preach, also, irl (am a university lecturer of art history and film studies). Read the product, not the process. Analyse the art, don't analyse the artist.
But. In my LJ life I suddenly find myself veering from this doctrine of mine! Maybe because in slash the process and the artist foreground themselves so insistently. I'm not just reading fics, I'm reading things written by people and Friends whom I chat with every day on LJ and whose inner layings bare of soul I have often shared in and who angst about their fics online and send stuff to beta and tell me more than I ever thought possible to know about the process. And then, of course, writing myself, the process becomes even more foregrounded.
But yes, ultimately, yoga is yoga. (Heh, I do yoga, too, so I'm identifying all the way here.)
But then I suppose it is also perfectly legitimate to analyse the process in its own right. It's analysing a different thing but why not? And it's weird, but maybe there are two products that can look identical but because one is written by a gay man it is not slashy, and one is written by a slasher-woman for her slashy woman mates and it is slashy. There's a photographer called Sherrie Levine who takes photos of other photographers' photos (e.g. by Walker Evans - is that his name?), and the photos look identical to the 'originals'. So here is a work of art, saying: "Yes, I look the same, yoga is yoga but guess what? I'm not the same at all." Of course, slash is not avant-gardy in this way. But hey, I'm rambling here.
Slash is generally defined as fiction involving romantic or sexual involvement between two characters of the same gender.
Yes, yes, but other people's definitions do not preclude me musing in my own fashion about these things.
the gay fiction is focused on exploration of relationship instead of political agenda or the modern gay identity (or porn about random men).
This is the claim I would really, one of these days, like to test by doing random comparisons between gay fic and slashy fic, a sort of formalist analysis. Because my suspicion is that even a slashy pwp is different from a gay bit of porn. I used to read gay bits of porn. Lots of them. Before I discovered slash. Because I thirsted and was willing to drink anything but when I drank the slash, I knew I had hit the right place and was never going to leave and was never going to bother reading any substitute gay porn evah again.
Unless it be for 'research', of course. *cackles*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:10 pm (UTC)*sporfles*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:25 pm (UTC)i was feeling particularly inspired that day...
b.x :D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-23 02:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-23 11:11 pm (UTC)And if it's me: iconoclastic, shmastic. I am a paeon of canon dogma, I'll have you know! (And paeon is probably so woefully mis-spelled I might as well have written peony.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-24 12:56 am (UTC)she particularly hates this icon of mine. *grin*
i sat and started at 'paeon' for a bit. i'm puzzled, now, because my mind started flicking through synonyms etc and hmm. 'paeon' as in 'south american peasant worker of the land'? 'scion'? 'pagan'?
it's like 'cornucopoeia', all those vowels make my fingers stutter.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 11:24 pm (UTC)n. metrical foot of one long and three short syllables or one stressed and these unstressed syllables.
*cackles*
I have no idea what word I actually wanted to use here. Scion sounds likely.
Hah, no, I just googled paean and that's the one I wanted!!
A song of joyful praise or exultation.
A fervent expression of joy or praise: “The art... was a paean to paganism” (Will Durant).
An ancient Greek hymn of thanksgiving or invocation, especially to Apollo.
Ooooh, isn't this educational?
And I'm sure it's cornucopia. Cornucopaean!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-26 03:06 am (UTC)what i'm wondering now is why you were googling when you have a beautiful shorter oxford set, i know you do. you wanton dictionary hussy!
i ended up thinking of peon, a peasant type found in the fields of nicaragua. not entirely au topique, i think; meanwhile, my 'corncucopia' was harking back to the latin etymology. *sniffs*
paean! oh lovely. epithalamion! eulogy! raise high the roof beams, carpenter!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-26 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-26 10:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 11:24 pm (UTC)n. metrical foot of one long and three short syllables or one stressed and these unstressed syllables.
*cackles*
I have no idea what word I actually wanted to use here. Scion sounds likely.
Hah, no, I just googled paean and that's the one I wanted!!
A song of joyful praise or exultation.
A fervent expression of joy or praise: “The art... was a paean to paganism” (Will Durant).
An ancient Greek hymn of thanksgiving or invocation, especially to Apollo.
Ooooh, isn't this educational?
And I'm sure it's cornucopia. Cornucopaean!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 11:24 pm (UTC)n. metrical foot of one long and three short syllables or one stressed and these unstressed syllables.
*cackles*
I have no idea what word I actually wanted to use here. Scion sounds likely.
Hah, no, I just googled paean and that's the one I wanted!!
A song of joyful praise or exultation.
A fervent expression of joy or praise: “The art... was a paean to paganism” (Will Durant).
An ancient Greek hymn of thanksgiving or invocation, especially to Apollo.
Ooooh, isn't this educational?
And I'm sure it's cornucopia. Cornucopaean!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 07:13 pm (UTC)Anyway, I wanted to see Breakfast; had, in fact, purchased tickets to it when it played here in L.A. at the AFI Film Festival in November, before I saw anything about it, other than the raves that it was getting at Toronto. And then I saw the trailer & it looked HORRIBLE, so I didn't go.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:09 pm (UTC)Prove me wrong! List me the others!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:35 pm (UTC)Here's the thing -- (most) films that deal with love as a central theme are made up of tragic romances & romantic comedies. There's not a lot of in-between, either for straight films OR gay films. Name me a dozen straight films where at least one of the main characters doesn't die tragically (or have to part tragically) or they two main characters are loveable nut jobs trying to overcome some sort of comic barrier before they waltz off into the sunset. *shrugs* Even the best of the 'straight' romances ('When Harry Met Sally', 'Casablanca', 'It Happened One Night', etc) fall into these two categories. The best of gay romantic cinema shouldn't be held to different standards, just because they're gay.
I'm not saying that there aren't stereotypes. But there are blonde stereotypes, too, in the film industry. The best that all filmmakers can do is to work at breaking down the stereotypes that are out there & hopefully the audiences will find them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-23 11:13 pm (UTC)And Some Like it Hot. *licks Marilyn*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-23 11:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-14 08:27 pm (UTC)the book by patrick mccabe is supposedly a lot more violent and depressing.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-23 11:14 pm (UTC)The part where he was the Chanel agent was a hoot!! I was rolling about laughing!! It was such joyful fun!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-24 01:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 11:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-17 03:07 am (UTC)I mean, they can understand "man", "woman", "macho men-loving man", and even "woman-identified transsexuals" and "man-identified transsexual". But they don't quite get "transvestites", nor "drag".
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-22 09:18 pm (UTC)I've been having third and fourth thoughts about Pluto. I still liked it a lot but ultimately, after having read a review in the UK's Observer that described it as 'Forrest Gump in Ireland', I have also come round to finding the whole innocent-fool thing a bit too much. The man is so innocent he is virtually debilitated, and that disturbs me a little.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-24 02:53 am (UTC)As for BoP, I would argue that this film is rather more opaque than Forrest Gump. There are many fantasy/whimsical scenes which make this film feel rather fluffy. But if you think about what is really going on, how Kitten looks at it and how he's dealing with it, you'd see Kitten is more a choice than the result of simple-mindedness. A lot of things he does take a lot of resolve and he knows what he chooses to do will make his life difficult. I'm not good at writing film reviews but there is review at the Automatik which put this quite aptly.
And I think BoP differ from Forrest Gump in some very key aspects: BoP doesn't preach going with the flow. Nor is it saying luck will see you through. It's quite obvious in the film that Kitten wouldn't have got away with it if he were less pretty. (And I don't think Kitten is unaware of it.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-05 06:13 pm (UTC)