The vote on this ONE award is such a notable aberration from the preceding Best Picture votes from nearly every other source that it quite reasonably calls itself into question. We have every right to be suspicious of people's cowardly motives (and it need only be 50%+1 who chose to vote for Crash and/or against Brokeback).
The Academy simply would not allow a film about men who love each other to take its place in the pantheon. The film no one would touch for six years is still the one they won't touch. In a year when every nominated film was great, when every one of them: "Brokeback Mountain", "Capote", "Crash", "Good Night and Good Luck", "Munich", had a large group who felt it deserved the Oscar, it's simply too easy to brush it off as chance, as 'one great film among many' and 'they all stood a chance of winning or losing."
The story, as Annie Proulx has said, had one outcome, from the beginning. It was a story about the power of homophobia, and Jack, because of his openness, had a particular destiny that he was headed toward. His twenty years of happiness with Ennis had to end, but Ennis lives on, and his story lives on. That Ennis and Jack found love makes the story eternal; that their love was denied makes the story meaningful. Jack, unfortunately, got a tireiron to the face for being who he was.
Despite winning virtually every other best film award, Brokeback Mountain, the movie, was tire-ironed too, in full view of everyone, for being what it was, for speaking its truth. It had to be. The Academy members simply could not reward a film that made them so very uncomfortable, a film they could not tell others to see, a film that could make them a target.
Much of what I wrote here ^ I also sent to my local paper Sunday night. On Monday I got a call from a writer doing a story on the controversy about Brokeback losing, and this morning (Tuesday), I was quoted (about three sentences of the above) on the front page of the Scene section.
Ironically, Brokeback may now actually be more lasting and more remembered; people tend to remember great films that are snubbed, whereas a win might have capped a great run and then it would have faded from public awareness, anointed as it should have been. Instead, it was overlooked, in the most obvious way possible, and has regained a measure of celebrity.
-backtobrokeback
