I don’t know if this is my favourite thing Roger Ebert ever wrote (he was far too good at waspish put-downs of the latest misbegotten turkey, and it’s hard to resist a kicking being delivered with calm efficiency by a master of the trade), but it’s a simple reflection on storytelling so precisely correct and expressed with such humanity that I keep coming back to it, referring to it repeatedly, even in contexts nothing to do with film.
It’s from his review of Brokeback Mountain, a film that I liked plenty as I watched it in the screening – admiring Heath Ledger’s performance, feeling sad in all the right places – but which then crept up and gut-punched me fifteen minutes after I’d left the cinema, leaving me wiping away tears in the street. The bold text is mine.
“Brokeback Mountain” could tell its story and not necessarily be a great movie. It could be a melodrama. It could be a “gay cowboy movie.” But the filmmakers have focused so intently and with such feeling on Jack and Ennis that the movie is as observant as work by Bergman. Strange but true: The more specific a film is, the more universal, because the more it understands individual characters, the more it applies to everyone. I can imagine someone weeping at this film, identifying with it, because he always wanted to stay in the Marines, or be an artist or a cabinetmaker.
The fact that this is itself a very specific observation that flows into a general truth is, of course, delightful. The man was a hell of a writer, but he was an even better watcher. Which is a rare skill in itself.
