musing

How would Brokeback Mountain compare to Happy Together?

I just thought of it because Quizas Quizas Quizas popped up on my iPod, which was a song Wong Kar-Wai used in In the Mood for Love, and Ang Lee uses it in Brokeback Mountain when Jack goes to Mexico. I was wondering if Lee picked that song in particular on purpose, because it would be a really neat reference if it was.

It's been a while since I watched Happy Together, but I think the two characters make imperfect parallels to the ones in Brokeback Mountain. There's Tony Leung's quiet torture, contrasted to Ennis Del Mar's taciturn personality, and there's Leslie Cheung's exuberant emotions, which are similar to Jack Twist's openness and demanding character. Totally unfounded, but I had this thought that Happy Together is what would have happened if Ennis and Jack didn't have wives and kids, and were able to have an open relationship - they would have driven each other crazy.

Happy Together is about two people who don't really know how to do it. There are few happy moments, and in between there are fights and demands and finally they break it off. I forget what happens at the end; I should dig out my DVD and see what happens.

Here's an interview with Wong Kar-Wai about Happy Together:

I would like to put it this way. I'm not satisfied with most of the HK films about this topic because they treat it specially; there must be something different. And to me I'm happy with "Happy Together" because there is nothing different. It is the story about two persons living together, and it so happens that the two persons, they are both men. The story can apply to a man and a woman, or two women, even a man and a tree. And I'm very curious because I've made six films so far, and the first five are stories about men and women, and people never ask why you make a film about a man and woman? But after "Happy Together", people kept asking me about 'why you make a film about two men?', and I think, maybe when people stop asking these questions, then there won't be any difference in making a gay film or a film about a man and a woman.

Here's an interview with Ang Lee about Brokeback Mountain:

That's a hard question to answer. I do what's truthful to my feelings. I brought some universal feelings, whether you're gay or straight, about love, Chinese family drama, about romance. I think I brought a lot of universality that help the two communities. It's a good gay film for people because it's in the middle of the road. I don't squeeze the characters into gay cinema. I think that's what's good...or not so good. I always try my best when I do a film that feels genuine to me. I put myself in the middle to try to make cinema work.

At the end, he says his next movie will be "Something Chinese." YAY!

Wong Kar-Wai and Ang Lee are two completely different directors in style, but I think they have similar points of departure. There tends not to be much dialogue in their movies, and they make their actors do most of the work. Wong Kar-Wai doesn't even use a script most of the time, so his actors are sort of acting blindly. Ang Lee is more consciously mainstream, whereas Wong's movies are more emotional and abstract. Both of them have amazing cinematography, Wong with the legendary Christopher Doyle, and Ang Lee with Rodrigo Prieto (who I don't know much about).