Stephanie Zacharek of salon.com never fails to misinterpret an incredible performance. Ann Hathaway is incredible in that final seen. If you can't see the 45 different emotions she feels at that very instant on the phone with Heath Ledger you are totally non-human. The female leads' performances in Brokeback are like the most economically expressive poetry I have seen. Has Ms. Z. never heard of haiku? Just because you don't understand 'the message' (a film critic's obsession that creatives will never understand) doesn't mean the emotion is lost.
But Anne Hathaway, as Jack's wife, Lureen, barely registers as a character. When we first meet her -- she's a young rodeo princess with a wild sex drive and an even wilder smile -- she jolts the movie awake like a pistol shot. But as the story limps along, moving from the '60s to the mid-'70s, her outfits get progressively louder and her teased tresses progressively blonder. She's a hairhopper by necessity, as if Lee had reached his quota of real human beings and needed to fill out the corners of his story with cartoons. Her final scene, in particular, is baffling. Lee directs it in such a way that we have no idea what it means: We go through the whole picture with no idea how she feels about her husband, and the movie's ending gives us no further clues.
Boy, she needs a clue phone huh?
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