Solitude and Hope: Y'all Come Visit!

The groundbreaking film about long-term loving feelings of attachment between two cowboys took top awards at the 63rd Golden Globes on Monday, a ceremony dealing almost entirely with low-budget, art house films that have not yet broken through to blockbuster-size audiences.

Brokeback Mountain, a poetic film that spans a 20-year private romantic bond between two men, based on the short story by Annie Proulx, won best dramatic film, best director for Ang Lee, best screenplay for Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana and best song.

The film, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the lovers, has raised the issue of the acceptance of gay relationships on screen and in wider American society. The film has been enthusiastically embraced by critics and within Hollywood....

Accepting his award, Mr. Lee saluted "the power of movies to change the way we're thinking."

In other roles that dealt with gay and gender issues, Felicity Huffman won best actress for her portrayal of a transgendered man in "TransAmerica." And Philip Seymour Hoffman won best actor in a dramatic role for playing Truman Capote, the flamboyantly gay and brazenly ambitious writer, in "Capote."

The awards were a triumph for the many smaller films that dominated this year's nominations for the Globes, which are seen as an important steppingstone to the Oscars. The 84-member Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which presents the Globes, nominated almost no major Hollywood productions for this year's awards, instead singling out an eclectic group of lower budget movies that haven't been widely seen by American audiences.

In addition to the winning Brokeback Mountain, other small films nominated for best drama were Mr. Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck," about the newsman Edward R. Murrow's battle with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy; "A History of Violence," a mobster mystery starring Viggo Mortensen; and "The Constant Gardener," directed by Fernando Meirelles.

In this main category the Foreign Press Association ignored major Hollywood productions like the director Sam Mendes's "Jarhead," Steven Spielberg's "Munich," Ron Howard's "Cinderella Man" and Peter Jackson's "King Kong."


Adapted From:
Sharon Waxman
Copyright: The New York Times
January 16, 2006