Wow. We just finished watching "Brokeback Mountain" last night, a movie that I hadn't actually much wanted to watch - from mangled reports I'd heard, I'd assumed it would be a bleak and depressing, angst-ridden movie about macho guys with stiff upper lips, and why torture myself with angst when I'm tired already? But Patrick wanted to watch it, so we rented it from Amazon, and watched it in two stages, half on Saturday night, and half on Sunday. The first half threw me right out of my preconceptions and impressed me hugely. And the second half....wow. The second half completely blew me away.

That was the most intensely romantic and beautifully tragic film I've seen in a very, very long time (and maybe even the most ever). Those of you who've already seen it will just have to bear with me ranting a little bit here, because "Brokeback Mountain" was amazing. It was beautiful, it was smart, and it was just perfectly understated, which was what made the emotional impact so powerful. As a writer, I found myself thinking, "I could learn so much from this..." - from the way that an emotion can be conveyed so much more strongly by not stating it explicitly, out loud, but instead showing it in the tiniest of gestures. In the last scene (no spoilers, I promise!), one character looks at a memento, begins to speak, then stops because he's too overcome. And it's perfect. We know exactly what he wants to say - and the scene works so much better for the way it's implied instead of shown. It's a very non-glitzy Hollywood film, in that way, and in the way the ensemble of actors works together seamlessly, without cameos or mug shots. And it was by far the most moving love story I've seen on screen.

I'm so glad I watched it after all.