Brokeback Mountain

We watched Brokeback Mountain this afternoon, quite by chance since I had no idea it was showing yet. I had low expectations, to be honest, partly because of the excessive hype around the film, especially within the gay community, and also because... well, I wasn't really all that psyched up to tackle ""The Most Important Gay Film Of Our Time" after eating fishball noodles at Simply Thai in my slippers.

Two hours later, however, I emerged totally impressed (yet again) with Lee Ang. He's made so many different kinds of films, but they all, in their own expert way, leave me with the same mixed emotions -- sad with the way the world is, yet hopeful; angry with how things turned out but also understanding that everything was inevitable and no one was to blame. "The Ice Storm" was like that, and so was "Sense and Sensibility".

It's also uncanny that I watched this just days after A. asked me whether I had ever thought about what I would be doing today if I didn't quit the civil service. Probably married with kids and a director in some Ministry, I said with a shudder. But definitely having secret encounters on the side, and possibly ending up stabbed in a parking lot in Malaysia after a botched attempt to "tow chiak" more discreetly.