Intense and emotionally perceptive. I pick up on unspoken words and speak the language of gesture. Deep, mysterious, and magnetically attractive. I yearn for emotional intimacy. If hurt, I really sting -- and I don't forgive easily
Brokeback Mountain
April 7, 2008
Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story "Brokeback Mountain" is one of the great modern love stories: its chiseled-from-rock prose lodges in your memory forever. It’s the story of two itinerant cowboys–Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), a part-time rodeo rider, and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), a laconic ranch hand–who fall into a physical relationship in 1963 while herding sheep in the Wyoming mountains. Ennis, as terrified as he is overwhelmed by his feelings, insists that it’s a one-shot thing. What both men discover, as the years pass and both marry and raise kids, is that the only vital thing in their lives is their brief, furtive, once-a-year meetings.
Director Ang Lee’s movie, from a fine and faithful screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, has already been proclaimed a landmark, a watershed in mainstream movies, the first gay love story with A-list Hollywood stars. But the reason it feels like a breakthrough is that Lee has made it for the right reasons: he recognizes a heartbreaking love story when he sees one. Maybe because he’s not an American, the Taiwanese-born director is neither afraid of the material nor impressed with himself for "daring" to make it. There’s neither coyness nor self-importance in "Brokeback Mountain"–just close, compassionate observation, deeply committed perform-ances, a bone-deep feeling for hardscrabble Western lives. Few films have captured so acutely the desolation of frustrated, repressed passion.
The macho, inarticulate Ennis is the more conflicted of the two men, and Ledger’s eloquent body language shows us a man imploding with rage, shame and yearnings he has no clue how to express. There’s a startling moment after Jack drives off in his truck, their summer idyll on the mountain over. Suddenly alone, overcome, Ennis hides in an alleyway, heaving his guts, pounding his head against a wall. Ennis seems to shrink inside himself as he ages, rigid with paranoia, his speech so curt it’s as if his own words tasted bad on his tongue. Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist is the pursuer, the one with a spring in his step. He dares to dream they could actually live life on their own terms, if they could just get out of Wyoming, go somewhere where openly loving a man might not get you killed.
Jack and Ennis aren’t the only ones hurting; their wives and kids are collateral damage. The women’s roles have been deftly fleshed out in the screenplay, and perfectly cast. Anne Hathaway is the rich, flirty Texan Lureen, who marries Jack and brings him into her father’s farm-equipment business. Her cocky sparkle turns brittle and dry. Michelle Williams is touching as Ennis’s neglected wife, Alma, who catches a glimpse of her husband kissing his friend with a hunger she never knew was in him–and chooses to say nothing.
"Brokeback Mountain" is in no rush. Its emotional impact builds slowly, its rhythms in tune with the countryside–the rugged grandeur of the mountains; the arid, bleak vistas of backwater Western towns, where the rooms seem as cramped as the sky is vast. Lee’s movie isn’t a Western, but it has much to say about the mindscape of the American West, where the myth of rugged individualism works only for those who don’t break the rules, and love can suffocate in the wide-open spaces.
The Da Vinci Code
Here’s a Da Vinci Code summary: Together, Langdon and Neveu embark on a high-paced, danger-around-every-corner adventure to discover the dead curator’s prior involvement in a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. The society’s historical members include the famous artist, Leonardo da Vinci — thus the name of the Dan Brown novel and Ron Howard film. The murder investigation ultimately becomes a quest by Langdon and Neveu to uncover an ancient conspiracy about a well-known religious relic — the Holy Grail of Jesus Christ. It turns out that the Priory of Sion has spent centuries protecting the “truth” about Jesus Christ and the Roman Catholic Church. The quest is to discover that “truth” hidden from the public since the time of Christ.
The curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris is murdered among a number of mysterious clues, codes, and ciphers. Harvard symbologist, Robert Langdon, is summoned to help solve the mysterious murder. His investigation brings him together with French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu.
Da Vinci Code Truth – The Manuscript
People are wondering if Brown’s book contains Da Vinci truth. The introductory note of the book says, “all descriptions of documents and secret rituals are accurate.” Is this a true statement? Is there such a thing as Da Vinci Code truth?
The book begins with the murder of Jacques Sauniere, the curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The curator, a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, an ancient secret society, wrote a cryptic message prior to his death. French police summon experts to decipher this message — Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor, and cryptographer Sophie Neveu, the estranged granddaughter of the murdered curator. What they find is a dangerous secret linking the curator to evidence that disproves the deity of Jesus Christ and could threaten the existence of the church. They discover that artists and thinkers have planted clues in numerous places for centuries. Langdon and Neveu race through Paris and England attempting to solve this centuries-old mystery while being chased by the police.
So how much of The Da Vinci Code is truth? When asked how much of his book is based on “reality in terms of things that actually occurred,” author Dan Brown said, “Absolutely all of it. Obviously, Robert Langdon is fictional, but all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies — all of that is historical fact.”1 “I began as a skeptic. As I started researching The Da Vinci Code, I really thought I would disprove a lot of this theory about Mary Magdalene and the Holy Blood and all of that. I became a believer.” 2
Da Vinci Code Truth – The Claims
In The Da Vinci Code, Brown presents the following as fact:
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Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and her womb was the Holy Grail. Jesus and Mary Magdalene had offspring together. The truth about Christ and Mary Magdalene has been kept alive by a secret society named the Priory of Sion that was led by great minds like Da Vinci.
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The gospels are not historically accurate. The Roman Catholic Church instigated a cover-up of some 80 gospel accounts that shed new light on the identity of Jesus.
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The early church did not believe that Jesus was divine. Instead, they “voted” for His divinity at the council of Nicea in the fourth century.
Although Brown claims that the book is filled with truths, the reader must keep in mind that this claim is included in the first paragraphs of a fiction book. Even claims that something is true, when found in a fiction book, are still fiction. If Brown had truly wanted to enlighten the world about his true nature of Jesus and the Catholic Church, he would have done so in a non-fiction setting. Why then did Brown assert in interviews that the information contained within his book was true? Listen to many interviews with well-known authors of fiction; they hold fast to the notion that their worlds, bizarre and even otherworldly, are true. Many authors do this to conjure interest in their books to increase sales. Others do this because to them, the worlds they have created do exist inside their minds. While much of the book is filled with fallacy, we will touch on the last two false claims from the list above.
Da Vinci Code Truth – Are the Gospels historically accurate?
One of the key points put forward by Brown as Da Vinci code truth is that the Bible cannot be trusted. Certain portions of the literature that Brown proclaimed as “Bible” do have fallacies. The early books called the Gnostic Gospels often disagree with the inspired gospels of God’s Word. Historians and theologians have studied these writings for thousands of years since the second century when they first surfaced. The church fathers speak of the heresies of these groups: Irenaeus (ca. 130-200), Hippolytus (ca. 170-236) and Tertullian (ca. 160-after 200), all write about the Gnostics. The writings were rejected by early church fathers because they did not correspond with the clear teachings of the 27 other books that were already being considered as the canon of Scripture.
Brown claims that the church knew of more than 80 gospels, but only chose four. The Nag Hammadi Library (published in 1977) is considered one of, if not the best resource on biblical and extra-biblical history. This library lists a total of 45 titles, and not all of them were gospels. Another collection, The Gnostic Scriptures (by Bentley Layton) has just short of 40 works, only three of which have the title gospel. Many of these overlap the same works in the Nag Hammadi list. At best, there were 60 works, and the strong majority were not gospel accounts.
Have these extra “gospels” provided new information on the identity of Jesus — information that contradicts the four inspired gospels? Yes, but not for the reasons that Brown proposes. He claims that these extra writings defined Jesus as merely a man and not divine. That is simply not true.
As honest seekers study the question, "Is the Bible true?" and consider its prophetic record, the historical evidence, the archaeological evidence, and learn of its authorship, they will discover that the Bible is inspired and can be trusted.
Da Vinci Code Truth - The Lie: Jesus Was Not God
Is this a Da Vinci truth or a Da Vinci lie? In the book, Brown claims that the core beliefs of Christianity had not been formulated until the time of the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century. This is a strange claim since the New Testament books give a clear understanding of orthodoxy and core beliefs.
By the time of the Council at Nicea in A.D. 325, history shows us that the central faith and belief system of Christianity had long been established. The council came together to affirm what the bishops and church leaders had been teaching for 200 years. They rubber-stamped the gospels by a vote of 218 to 2, which is not “a relatively close vote” as Brown claims. In fact, Paul asserted to the deity of Jesus almost 300 years prior to the Nicene Council and Constantine.
The similarity and concise understanding of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God and salvation are written quite clearly by Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, John, James, and Paul in the first century. The Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) are incredibly clear about what constitutes true salvation and sound doctrine.
Study for yourself: Is Jesus God? Did He come to earth as God to save humanity from eternity in hell? Did He die on the cross for you personally?
