Liberal Talk Radio

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Movie Review division recently gave Brokeback Mountain a damning “morally offensive” rating. The review noted that while the movie makers treat the controversial subject matter (”which a Catholic audience will find contrary to its moral principles”) with “discretion,” the USCCB could not abide their “[t]acit approval of same-sex relationships, adultery, two brief sex scenes without nudity, partial and shadowy brief nudity elsewhere, other implied sexual situations, profanity, rough and crude expressions, alcohol and brief drug use, brief violent images, a gruesome description of a murder, and some domestic violence.”

Even so, the Bishops found that Brokeback Mountain was not entirely without merit:

Director Ang Lee tells the story with a sure sense of time and place, and presents the narrative in a way that is more palatable than would have been thought possible. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana’s screenplay uses virtually every scrap of information in Proulx’s story, which won a National Magazine Award, and expands it while remaining utterly true to the source.

The performances are superb. Australian Ledger may be the one to beat at Oscar time, as his repressed manly stoicism masking great vulnerability is heartbreaking, and his Western accent sounds wonderfully authentic. Gyllenhaal is no less accomplished as the more demonstrative of the pair, while Williams and Hathaway (the latter, a far cry from “The Princess Diaries,” giving her most mature work to date) are very fine.

Looked at from the point of view of the need for love which everyone feels but few people can articulate, the plight of these guys is easy to understand while their way of dealing with it is likely to surprise and shock an audience.

. . .

While the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed, the universal themes of love and loss ring true. [Emph. added]

While battling puerile thoughts during Midnight Mass, we began to wonder what the USCCB reviewers thought about some other notable films through the years. A sampling:

• Over the Top (1987), starring Sylvester Stallone: “Limp, unconvincing drama directed by Menahem Golan says little about the nature of father-son relationships and opts instead for the goofy contortions of an arm-wrestling championship.” (Suitable for Adults and Adolescents.)
• While Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) misses the mark (”Although the movie is frequently very funny and has a touch of humanity lacking in Allen’s earlier work, it falls far short of its more ambitious intention of making a serious statement about human relationships.”), his earlier Bananas (1964) is downright morally offensive: “Woody Allen’s patchwork comedy is loosely tied to a Latin American revolution which serves as the excuse for the standard fare of tasteless insult and irreverence, chock full of gratuitous nonsense dragged in seemingly because there was still a little film in the camera.”
• Fortunately, all films in the Police Academy franchise are reviewed, some more favorably than others. Police Academy 4 (1987), for example: “Limp plot and lame script with unfunny Keystone Cop slapstick antics by Steve Guttenberg, Bobcat Goldwait and company is featured in this edition which deals with the academy’s post-graduate project involving a citizens action group. Tame in language and sexual references, director Jim Drake’s movie emphasizes aerial and ballooning chase sequences. Mild-mannered but sophomoric entertainment.” (Adults only.)
• And finally, while good and decent movie buffs can respectfully agree to disagree whether a film is “morally offensive,” not even the most prudish of us will quibble with the USCCB’s take on the pretentious and overlong Quest for Fire (1982): “Ludicrously serious prehistoric adventure tale about three warriors (Everett McGill, Ron Perlman and Nameer Eli-Kadi) whose search for fire when that of their clan has been extinguished by a marauding band of Neanderthals leads to a humanizing encounter with a more culturally advanced girl (Rae Dawn Chong) who helps them learn to laugh and even fall in love. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud who co-scripted with Gerard Brach, its attempts at authenticity are made even more ludicrous by brutal sex scenes, violent combat and other assorted caveman antics.” (Morally offensive.)