Scott Lamb

“Brokeback Mountain,” on the other hand, is a quiet drama made very much in the mold of classic American tragic love stories, and has been compared to everything from “Titanic” — even the movie posters are purposefully similar — to “Gone With the Wind.” But while in no way political in itself — the story sticks close to the characters and the arc of their relationship — a film about two cowboys (even one with the tag line “Love is a force of nature”) cannot help finding itself suddenly sucked into a political vortex beyond the filmmaker’s control, given the current cultural divide over gay rights. It’s a film that “bucks Hollywood convention” and “explores the last frontier,” and in a year that has seen a ferocious national debate over same-sex marriage, a taboo-busting movie that brings together two rising young male Hollywood stars locking lips on the big screen is bound to stir controversy.

Or you’d at least be forgiven for thinking so. Because it turns out that there’s a concerted effort — on both sides — to avoid turning “Brokeback Mountain” into a political battle.

Instead of boycotts, picket lines or enraged letters to the editor, conservative Christian groups are hoping to kill the film with silence. Robert Knight, director of the Culture & Family Institute at Concerned Women for America, says his group has made a conscious decision not to campaign against the film. “People aren’t going to walk around outside theaters with protest signs,” Knight says. “This is not ‘The Last Temptation of Christ,’ which was such an affront that people felt they had to respond. This is something that could be and should be ignored.

“We’ve actually discussed whether to do some sort of action,” Knight says. “But the consensus was, why give it that much credit, or why call attention to it?”

Peter Sprigg, vice president of the Family Research Council — the group that a year ago led a campaign against “Kinsey,” the biopic about America’s favorite/most-hated sex researcher — says his group came to a similar conclusion. “We talked about whether we should do something, but at this point we don’t have any plans,” says Sprigg. “Some of these things, we don’t want to draw attention to them. We would almost be doing them a favor if we were to mount a big campaign — we’d be making a martyr out of the movie, so to speak. I don’t think we want to fall into that.”

Even Focus on the Family, which on Thursday announced it would stop using Wells Fargo because of the bank’s contributions to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), has been mum, indicating that it would release some sort of statement on the film, but that it had no campaign planned.

What happened to the phone tree and newsletter agitation of years past, like the protests that surrounded Ellen’s coming out on “Ellen,” or the American Family Association’s sustained campaign against “Will & Grace”? Perhaps the Christian right believes there’s no such thing as bad press, and the surest method to induce box-office death is total silence. “Hey, it’s about time,” says Curtis Mork, a coordinator at the gay activist group Wyoming Equality in Cheyenne, Wyo. “They’re getting smart. I’ve always said, the more they complain about us, the stronger we get.”

Of course, predicting how a film like “Brokeback Mountain” will affect the national consciousness before it comes out is a dicey game at best. “Fahrenheit 9/11″ and “Passion” (and for that matter, “Last Temptation”) came with their controversies pre-packaged, while other recent hubbubs (NippleGate, anyone?) seemed to arrive from out of the deep blue. But that hasn’t stopped the cultural conservatives from declaring “Brokeback” a non-issue before the movie is out (or they’ve even having seen it). Conservative radio host and movie critic Michael Medved says, “When I’ve spoken to people about it, the general reaction is bemusement. In other words, ‘Look at this, everyone’s excited about a gay cowboy movie.’” Medved also feels that “Kinsey” — based on a true story rather than fiction — raised conservative ire in a way “Brokeback” can’t. “‘Kinsey’ was an issue, not because of gay content, but because it was dealing with a significant historical figure. I could be wrong on this, and I acknowledge that I could be wrong, but I just don’t see a lot of agitation in the cultural conservative community about ‘Brokeback Mountain.’

“There may well be a sort of forlorn hope on the part of the movie’s producers and promoters that conservatives will make a huge issue of it, and thereby generate a certain amount of box-office heat,” he adds. “And my very strong guess is that most conservatives will refuse to oblige them.”

But there may also be a much simpler explanation for the right’s hands-off approach to the film. “Imagine protesting ‘Titanic’ or ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ” says Dave DeCicco, communications director at the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. “It’s a really bad idea, because you’re going to have broad appeal with the movie. One of the things people in this country enjoy is a love story. The right-wing lunatics are maybe smart enough to back off.”

Damon Romine, entertainment media director for GLAAD, points out that critics are already “overwhelmingly embracing” the movie, and that a campaign against it might ultimately backfire. “If people think that publicly attacking this film is a good use of their time, it says far more about them and their agenda than it does about ‘Brokeback Mountain.’”

“At its most basic level, this is a story about relationships,” he says. “The love that these characters experience in many ways transcends categories of gay and straight; this is a universal love story.”

The focus on the movie’s love story has been central to the planning of the movie from the very beginning. According to Newsweek, the movie’s producer, James Schamus, told director Ang Lee early on that the film would be marketed directly to one audience. “Yes, of course,” said Lee, “the gay audience.” No,” Schamus replied, “women.”

Schamus says he, too, hasn’t heard rumors of a brewing outcry against the movie. “We’re not really getting a sense there’s much to talk about on that front, or that there ever will be,” he told Salon by e-mail. He has previously made it clear he’s not interested in taking on people who object to the film’s content. “If you have a problem with the subject matter, that’s your problem, not mine,” Schamus told Newsweek. “It would be great if you got over your problem, but I’m not sitting here trying to figure out how to help you with it.”

They may be backing off from a coordinated attack, but when pressed, they certainly can’t hide their disdain for it. “I don’t think it’s going to be another ‘Philadelphia,’ because it’s one thing to garner sympathy for a man dying of AIDS; it’s another to tell America that they should accept two cowboys lusting after each other,” says the Culture & Family Institute’s Knight. He also brushes off the potential effect of an Oscar nomination or win — which helped catapult “Philadelphia” into mainstream consciousness — by citing a canard about the failure of Oliver Stone’s biopic on Alexander the Great. “I don’t think it will matter. I mean, look, ‘Alexander’ was doomed when word got around that it had a bisexual aspect to it. People don’t want to see that. They don’t want to see two guys going at it. It’s that simple.”

While Stone was among those blaming the rumors of bisexuality for his film’s dismal box-office showing, it has to be said that the critical reaction to “Alexander” was almost universally negative, a fact that probably had more to do with its financial failure than did its hero’s implied bisexuality. “Brokeback,” on the other hand, was generating Oscar buzz as soon as it premiered, and Heath Ledger is already heavily favored for a best actor nomination.

Oddly, there’s more outrage over the perceived damage the film will do to the hallowed masculine image of cowboys. A story about the movie in the Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune — cited by Matt Drudge — quotes lifelong resident and playwright Sandy Dixon as saying she doesn’t know a single gay cowboy: “There’s nothing better than plain old cowboys and the plain old history without embellishing it to suit everyone.” Or, as Knight puts it: “A cowboy who’s lusting after his buddy isn’t fit to wear cowboy boots.” (Curtis Monk, who leads an AIDS-awareness program and also coordinates events for Wyoming Equality, tends to disagree. “I alone personally know 15 gay cowboys who come to our dances.”)

But Knight is really fired up about the affront to the ghosts of westerns past: “I think this shows that Hollywood can pervert anything. Part of the enduring appeal of westerns is the display of brotherhood, unhindered by sexualization. You often hear the phrase ‘to be a straight-shooter.’ That means to speak plain truths and walk easily amid the natural bonds of affection, without the distraction of misplaced sexual urges. In other words, the audience can relax. Their hero is not going to get weird on them.

“The western was a morality tale, so to make immorality the heart of this western is to violate the code of westerns. That’s why it’s not going to work.”

Lee, talking to the Hollywood Reporter, has actually insisted the movie is “not a Western. No gunslingers. I don’t want to undermine the sanctified image of the American Western man. It’s a love story of real people in the West.”

There’s also more than a slight tinge of boosterism going on here, in the face of “Brokeback” opening against “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” Knight links box-office success with moral authority. “You know, that’s going to be quite a contrast,” he says. “You’re going to have a roll-out of a film that’s going to be a blockbuster, and it reflects basic Christian values, going up against a limited release of a movie that mocks traditional morality. And I’ll betcha I know which one is going to win.

“I think Ang Lee is off his rocker if he thinks he can have the same commercial success with two cowboys instead of a cowboy and a cowgirl, as other movies do.”

The comparison, though, is deeply flawed. “Narnia,” with its $150 million budget and months-long P.R. campaign behind it, is a bigger movie opening on a much greater scale (more than 3,000 screens). “Brokeback,” with a budget of $13 million, is technically considered an independent film, and will open on only five screens, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com.

But still, the Narnia phenomenon may be in part responsible for the general silence on “Brokeback” by siphoning off a lot of effort that might otherwise have gone into a campaign. Sprigg cites Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and publisher of the Christian magazine Movieguide, who has called for a different approach to influencing pop culture. “The idea is that rather than a negative response of boycotts and picketing and things like that, to encourage a positive response to movies that portray positive values,” Sprigg says. “And particularly, I’ve seen articles encouraging people to go see some of these positive movies on the first weekend because the first weekend box office has a lot of influence on how the film is received overall. I think that may be more of a growing response.”

That’s certainly going to be the response with “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” with many churches purchasing group tickets in advance and planning bus trips to theaters.

No matter how it does at the box office, neither the film’s producers nor its detractors on the right get to ultimately decide how “Brokeback Mountain” will play out in the culture, whether it will be a defining moment, the way “Ellen” was in 1997, or just the butt of more “South Park” jokes. (Cartman once defined independent movies as “those black-and-white hippie movies. They’re always about gay cowboys eating pudding.”) But even Knight admits there’s a chance the film will be the big event of the weekend.

“Maybe after years of MTV shoving sexual license in kids’ faces there’s a whole new generation ready for two cowboys going after each other instead of the cowgirl,” says Knight, “but I hope not.”

Blame those plus-size episodes. The season’s several hour-long installments were too much of a good thing. They felt watered down, the same number of jokes spread over double the time. We saw less of the side characters: Oscar (Oscar Nunez) was gone for a while; Meredith (Kate Flannery) disappeared for a time after Michael (Steve Carell), in one of those big, loud moments, hit her with his car. Yet the larger character arcs, the season-long narratives, never really picked up speed. The long mid-season break brought on by the strike didn’t help: By the time the dinner party episode — in which Jan and Michael publicly played out their issues — aired, right after the strike, Jan’s (Melora Hardin) suit against Dunder Mifflin and Ryan’s Web 2.0 visions for the company were hard to recall. And the show’s timing never really recovered. It became a guessing game for critics and fans — when would “The Office” start being “The Office” again?

One thing “The Office” has always been good for, though, is big endings. The last two seasons delivered a satisfying show that wrapped up some of the season’s plotlines while making us curse that it would be months until we got to see the next one. Going into Thursday’s season finale, expectations were high. This episode would finally bring it all together! Jim’s (John Krasinski) proposal to Pam (Jenna Fischer) was probably going to be the centerpiece, but other plotlines waited in the wings: the renewed frisson between Angela (Angela Martin) and Dwight (Rainn Wilson), Michael’s unresolved relationship with Jan, Toby’s (episode co-writer Paul Lieberstein) move to Costa Rica, the battle of passive aggressiveness between Ryan and Jim. Despite the season’s disappointments, last week’s lead-in hinted that a lot would go down, and to quote from the voice-over promo cliché handbook, “The Office” “would never be the same again.”

The show’s theme was Toby’s last day — he’s moving to Costa Rica. Versatile Oscar nominee Amy Ryan, also familiar to fans of “The Wire,” arrives as Holly Flax, the new face of H.R. A mixture of gullible, cute and theatrical, she’s less an obvious comic character than the rest of the cast. When Michael explains that she’s filling the void as his logical opposite — he calls human resources a “breeding ground for monsters” — she parries with a joke about how boring Toby’s tour of the office files was. Of course, Michael instantly falls in love with her.

Other shenanigans play out on the side: Ryan is arrested for his fraudulent practice of having employees enter all sales twice, once on the old system, once on the Web. Dwight begins hazing Holly, as though being hired to work in Scranton were like rushing a state school frat. “Hazing is a fun way to show a new employee she is not welcome or liked,” he tells us. His tricks fall mostly by the wayside, except for the way he convinces Holly that Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) is the office’s “special” employee.

Meanwhile, the party planning committee is arranging Toby’s last hurrah. They end up with a miniature fair in the parking lot, complete with bouncy air castle and Ferris wheel. Jim offers to pay for fireworks. The stage is set! When will Jim pop the question? We know he will, because he tells the camera “I’m going to propose tonight” — goofy grin — “holy crap.”

When the big moment comes, just as Jim begins fumbling in his pocket for the ring, Andy (Ed Helms) grabs the microphone and asks for everyone’s attention. “I was waiting for the right time to do this, and I can’t think of a better time than right now,” he says. It’s like he planned the whole thing — he even has his parents there! — and of course he awkwardly asks for Angela’s tiny hand in marriage (her reply: “I said OK“). Cut to Dwight, looking pained. Pam’s mouth drops open; Jim tucks the ring back into his pocket.

We were meant to feel sad about this, but the moment fizzled. The lack of emotional payoff here gets at why this season of “The Office” felt like it was missing something. For all its sitcom high jinks, the show has always had a sweet undercurrent of drama. We wanted Pam to dump her lame fiancé and be with Jim. We cheered silently for Michael getting together with hot, crazy Jan. Dwight and Angela’s secret affair wasn’t just played off for laughs.

But Michael provides the episode’s only moving moments. After discovering Jan has decided to get pregnant without him — she went to a sperm bank — his pain is visible and real, and when he returns to the parking lot party he blows off Holly, who somehow has also clearly become smitten with him. By the end, we see him in his office on the phone, making the inevitable mistake of assuring Jan’s voice mail he’ll be at her Lamaze class, even though he has no idea what that is.

As a grace note, we’re given a shocking final scene: Phyllis goes into the office after the party and catches Dwight and Angela all sweaty and naked. It’s the scene that will likely be most discussed around the water cooler today, but it seemed too calculated. Sure, we never thought things would ultimately work out for Andy, but do we really care? He’s always been a poor stand-in for Dwight.

I miss the sweetness of the Jim and Pam’s romance — it always stood apart from the rest of the office’s gray shallowness, but this season, in part because of Jim’s need to propose, it’s been infected by it. For the show’s first three seasons, we identified with Jim, the ironic presence who often literally winked at the camera. It seemed (or did we hope) that he might, at any moment, grab Pam and find a way out of the Dunder Mifflin cul de sac. Instead, Pam has become the character with a future that might not revolve entirely around paper — will her three months at the Pratt Institute studying art be the basis for the rumored spin-off show? As the season progressed, Jim’s mugging for the camera began to seem rote, his punking Dwight perfunctory, and we slowly began to realize that, as much as he might talk down Dunder Mifflin, he wasn’t going anywhere soon. (Michael at one point says, “I look at somebody like Jim Halpert, and I think that guy could do anything that he wants to do. He could do anything. And he chooses to work here, selling paper. Just like me.”) In some ways this finale was perhaps the closest the show has come yet to its British original: No one is getting out of here alive. * * * *

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