Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Directed by: Ang Lee
Written By: Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway
Rated: R

I have a weakness for superlatives, I know. I'm the type of person who feels all of an emotion or nothing at all; if I enjoy something then I love it, and if I don't I hate it. I like using grand words that many films and performances probably don't rightly deserve simply because I appreciate that they were able to elicit an emotional response from me. But believe when I say that am not going to exaggerate with this film. In fifty years, when we look back on all of the movies that have passed the test of time, "Brokeback Mountain" will be remembered as one of the defining cinematic moments of the first decade of our century.

Of course the film faces stigma brought on by the three ugliest words that could be strung together to describe it: gay cowboy movie. Sure, a person can thickly go into this film and sludge three tangible words together that describe it on less than its most basic level. All three of them would be true in some sense or another, and many people read those words or hear them spoken and they tune out and shut down. Ernest Borgnine went on record stating that he would neither watch nor vote for the film, as it was a disgrace to Western genre. That is the price Ang Lee paid for venturing into territory that filmmmakers before him only danced around. For those of you who do give it a chance I hope you sponge away those three blemishing words and accept a love story for what it is.

Set in the sweeping, picturesque mountains of rural Wyoming, Lee's tale of unrequited love is placed against a changing Western backdrop. Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger), two teenage ranch hands, are hired to tend sheep up on old Brokeback. Quiet and secluded, the first third of the story watches them drink, shoot coyotes, and generally be cowboys. One miserably cold night forces them to share a tent, and in the darkness Jack instigates one of the most singularly unusual sex scenes ever filmed.

I remember seeing this movie in a full theater when I was 15 and newly out as a gay man, and the scene frightened me. Ennis is a man of very few words, a brooding man's man. When he and Jack are intimate for the first time it is angry and violent, almost a fight in which Ennis asserts that it is simply physical, jumping onto Jack, heaving with his clothes still on. The next day, after a long pause, Ennis tells Jack "You know I ain't queer?", to which Jack immediately jumps in, "Me neither." They are--or at least Jack is--but 1963 Wyoming gives them no outlet and no words to express themselves in any other way.

The second time they are together it is not sex, it is love making. The scene is passionate, with Jack cradling Ennis like a child. Their brief summer of exploration comes to an end, but it forms a lifetime of longing and loneliness as the two of them try and keep the small sparks of their intense love alive, through failed marriages, children, thankless jobs and thousands of miles distance between them. Jack wants the two of them to start a ranch together, to be with each other all the time, but Ennis is too aware of his surroundings. A frightening flashback shows a young Ennis being taken to an old ravine with his father where a dead man with his penis pulled off lies rotting. That was his price for living alone with another man, and Ennis fears the same.

The Taiwanese Ang Lee has proven himself to be one of the most thoughtful and versatile working directors, offering us an expansive, delicate and emotionally thunderous movie about two men whose lives are ruined for having loved. He is as introspective as focused and compassionate with his characters as someone like Bergman; he is a brutal and honest humanist.

Rolling slowly through decades we watch Jack sell large farming equipment, in a marriage with a woman (Anne Hathaway) that is little more than a business partnership. Surely she suspects him. Jack has been to Mexico picking up prostitutes and he often flirts with rodeo boys. His few yearly encounters with Ennis disguised as fishing trips are not enough to satisfy his desire to be close to a man.

For Ennis, I don't believe he was ever gay, but more just impossibly in love. His life goes nowhere and he is nothing. His marriage to Alma (Michelle Williams) ends when she discovers her husband's affair, and Ennis takes no steps to better himself, his life slowing pulling him ahead even though he is anchored to his memory of that first summer with Jack.

This film would be nothing were the main characters not acted with love. A first-rate ensemble cast is spearheaded by stunningly powerful performances by Ledger, Gyllenhaal and Williams. Ledger in particular is almost too good and too sad to watch. The man lives and breathes Ennis Del Mar, who is so scared of who is and what he wants that he leads his life to ruin. He nearly shatters from the inside out, but keeps it in grasp behind a low growl and a stern face. It is truly a magnificent performance.

I won't spoil the ending, but it is ambiguous and devastating at the same time. For what Borgnine said about the film, let me offer an opposing opinion. Daniel Day-Lewis, our modern Brando, has said that this is one of his favorite films, and that its final scene was "as moving as anything I have ever seen." Now, you can read a review of some uppity, superlative-happy critic who proclaims this as an immensely important cinematic masterpiece, or you can take a quote that like from one of the great screen actors and do with it what you will. I think that this film may still yet be ahead of its time, or perhaps those who watch it and call it a gay cowboy movie don't know how love should be represented on screen. In any case it was made, it was made perfectly and I know that it will be remembered as one of the greats.

4/4