So you know how you know who your first crush was? The one whose poster you plastered all over your walls, the one you fell asleep looking at, the one you secretly (or not so secretly) planned to marry. 'My future husband' you would say. It almost doesn't matter who it is. It could be Leo, it could be a Backstreet Boy, it could be Seth Cohen (a thousand teenage girls of the noughties sigh). Well, for me, that first crush, last crush, always crush was Jake Gyllenhaal. Oh Jake. You have no idea how bad it gets. I wish I knew how to quit you. Not even when my friends tell me that his eyes are too close together (on the weekend, while in an absolute dive bar, my oldest bud said to me 'look I'm not saying that if he took his clothes off in front of me I'd say no, but seriously, on a scale of one to cyclops he's like a 7, maybe 7.5'). Not ever. I have loved him since Donnie Darko. I saw Prince of Persia three times in the cinema. And don't even get me started on Love and Other Drugs...
I remember seeing Brokeback Mountain. I remember falling in love. I remember double denim. I remember crying so hard I thought people might ask me to leave. At the 2006 Oscars I remember wanting so bad for Brokeback to win the best picture award. I remember feeling gutted when it didn't. But there was Heath and Michelle (in that dress!) and Ang's speech and Jake being hilarious. My sixteen year old self wondered how such a beautiful, haunting, overwhelming film could miss out on the top honour. A slave to awards shows even then, I had not yet realised how political they could be. I still had stars in my eyes. I'm lucky that that first realisation didn't kill the whole enterprise. I laughed along with the rest of them at 36mafia 1, Scorsese 0. I hoped, rather than knew, Ang Lee's (and Heath's and Jake's) time would come. I remember crying like a baby when Heath died, thinking the whole time of this.
What's so good about this wardrobe? it's the cowboy thing, firstly. I've always been drawn to a good felt hat and have recently adopted double denim as my unofficial wardrobe of spring. Shearling I know well. But what I am drawn to at the moment is the whole 70s vibe. I have recently watched a few movies set in the 70s (Rush, Jobs), and god, it was a sexy era. The open shirts, the tight jeans, the big belts, the big hair. Men looked masculine. They acted masculine too - rode horses, smoked cigarettes, punched things - but most of all they looked the part in their denim and shearling and shirts. I think the normalcy of the wardrobe in this does much to advance character development. The torment of the Ennis and Jack is only heightened by their relative anonymity. They look the part, they just can't act it. That tension between reality and fiction, the tension of living a lie, is always the major theme I take away from the film. I think the costumes express that tension so, so admirably.
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with the title cinematic style - Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. You can bookmark this page URL http://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/10/cinematic-style-jake-gyllenhaal-in.html. Thanks!
