Brokeback Mountain [2005]

Its open, unforced depiction of love between two men made Brokeback an instant cultural touchstone, for both good and bad, as it was tagged derisively as the "gay cowboy movie," but also heralded as a breakthrough for mainstream cinema. Amidst all the hoopla of various agendas, though, was a quiet, heartbreaking love story that was both of its time and universal--it was the quintessential tale of star-crossed lovers, but grounded in an ever-changing America that promised both hope and despair. Adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from Annie Proulx's short story, the movie echoes the sparse bleakness of McMurtry's The Last Picture Show with its fading of the once-glorious West; but with Lee at the helm, it also resembles The Ice Storm, as it showed the ripple effects of a singular event over a number of people. As always, Lee's work with actors is unparalleled, as he elicits graceful, nuanced performances from Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway as the wives affected overtly and subliminally by their husbands' affair, and Gyllenhaal brings surprising dimensions to a character that could have easily just been a puppy dog of a boy. It's Ledger, however, who's the breakthrough in the film, and his portrait of an emotionally repressed man both undone and liberated by his feelings is mesmerizing and devastating. Spare in style but rich with emotion, Brokeback Mountain earns its place as a classic modern love story. --Mark Englehart

Here too, in the aged and lonely Ennis, I see my father as he is now - trying to reconnect with his daughter. This film hurt me more than I can say for its beauty, brutality, and intimacy in the face of thoughts, experiences and feelings I have held onto in silence for so long. It's the adult's eye view of my childhood around my father, the missing pieces of the jigsaw that have enabled me to see him now as a whole person and not just as the man who abandoned us in every possible way.

It's the film I will show my own children to help them understand the home I came from, the scars I still bear, and the beliefs and values in my heart.

A stunning and raw film for anyone in the process of coming to terms with a parent's sexuality.


A mountaintop experience   March 16, 2006
 67 out of 72 found this review helpful

I recall a short story version of Brokeback Mountain many years ago in a major periodical (alas, I can't recall the periodical). I had an idea that it would, in the fullness of time, become a major motion picture, and that it has. It is an award-winning film already, and looks set for some sort of Oscar recognition. The film has garnered more Oscar nominations than any other this year.

However, in the hype surrounding the film, those interested would be wise to look at the book. There is much more depth here than in the film, much more about the interior workings of the main characters and what they must endure. This is ultimately not a love story, as the marketing has been spinning the film, but rather an expose on the dangers and drawbacks of living in the closet. For the purposes of this story, Annie Proulx has juxtaposed two diametrically opposite cultures in the American psyche - the gay culture and the cowboy culture (although history is, as it often is, in fact rather different from what the Hollywood-created current remembrance of it is). One comes to wonder at the resistance that all characters seem to have for breaking free of their bonds; ultimately, none of the relationships are satisfying, and there is an emotional desolation as wide and spare as brush land and prairies of the American West.

The lead characters meet while working for the summer as wranglers and watchers over herds. They form a bond that renews at regular intervals during their lives, lives that go on to other, more traditional and socially acceptable settings. Each gets married, each has children, each embarks (in one way or another) in a working life that would seem to preclude the other, but yet the tie that binds them draws them together again on a regular basis.

The closet theme is heightened in the lead characters, but in fact serves as a metaphor for readers who might not fit in that particular closet - we all have skeletons in our closets, it seems, and in fact, we all have our own closets in which we hide and live out part of our lives.

This theme is played in out in several scenes of the film - Ennis Del Mar finding his shirt intertwined with Jack's shirt in Jack's closet, which Ennis then proceeds to put into his own closet.

The last scene is perhaps the most powerful of all, drifting to a final image. Ennis' daughter, having announced her marriage plans, drives off into the dusty plain; Ennis is living in isolation in his own trailer which has next to no furniture (his daughter comments that he needs a chair); and the very final shot is of a closet door, kept closed until Ennis is alone, with a view of the mountains in the far distance just outside the window beyond.

In terms of overall cinematography, this is a beautiful film. Ang Lee's direction has provided wonderful panoramic views of the mountains and the plains, the not-so-wild west of America, mid-century. This is a world very different from either coast - the trends of the cities in New England and California have little effect on life here, which goes on generation after generation with an unrelenting sameness.

Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal, fresh from his role as a marine in 'Jarhead') and Heath Ledger (whose film 'Casanova', playing at the same time in the same cinema in my town, cast him in a very different role) play the leads of Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, two down-on-their-luck wranglers who get a summer job camping out with sheep herds in the mountains - the kind of 24 hour/7 day-per-week job that virtually nobody wants. Jack is the extrovert, whereas to call Ennis an introvert might win the Oscar for understatement. At one point, Jack points this out, after a conversation that only lasted for about a minute.

Jack Twist: 'That's more words than you've spoke in the past two weeks.'
Ennis Del Mar: 'Hell, that's the most I've spoke in a year.'

Ledger's portrayal of Ennis is remarkable in that Ennis seems to be almost inarticulate. Everything is said in a grumble, a low-level, low-syllable-count manner. Gyllenhaal's portrayal of Jack as the ants-in-his-pants, high-energy bronco buster cowboy is also very enthralling. Jack's passion for many things comes through, and through the film we come to discover (as Ennis comes to discover) that this passion comes with a high price.

Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams play the wives of Jack and Ennis, respectively. Both want 'regular' lives, and both discover there is more to their husbands' relationship than fishing-buddy friendship in different ways. In some ways, the film reminded me of another film, 'Same Time Next Year', in which a couple gets together on a regular basis while maintaining stable, family relationships elsewhere. However, there is a price to be paid for leading such double lives, and we see this manifested in different ways in the lives of Ennis, Jack, and their wives and children. Again, the issue of the closet comes into play.

Of course, the big 'issue' for the film is homosexuality and homophobia. That this takes place within the almost-sacred genre of the American Western also adds to the heightened interest - the mythology of the American cowboy being a super-macho figure has already been developed as a gay stereotype by such groups as the Village People and what sociologists might call costume-culture communities. The unspoken secret that rarely made even a mention on Hollywood screens was that cowboys, being isolated much of the time, and in male-only communities when they did have company, almost certainly had a higher incidence of same-sex expression than we have come to believe through the mythology.

Ennis and Jack do put physical and emotional expression to their passion and to their love for each other, but societal expectations and personal feelings (what some term internalised homophobia) work to keep them apart and leading separate (and dual) lives throughout the twenty-year span of the film.

There is no happy ending to this film - I left the cinema with a feeling about as desolate as the dry and dusty plains shown in many of the scenes. I found bits of the music score coming back to me for days afterwards, and each time this happened, I would feel a bit more sombre, and a little bit lost for words. The original themes by Gustavo Santaolalla and Marcelo Zarvos are very well done, and this is a soundtrack I mean to get.


Ennis and Jack   July 13, 2006
 21 out of 22 found this review helpful

Love has no rules. It happens when we least expect it, often when we don't want it, many times when we can't handle it. It often times scares you, surprises you, shakes you down to your very core. Ennis Del Mar (a remarkable Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (an emotionally available Jake Gyllenhaal) find themselves thrown together because of a job: forced to spend many hours together alone in the wild, tending to sheep in a remote region of Wyoming....on Brokeback Mountain. They fall in love: a love that they soon realize only lives and breathes on the mountain.
It's 1963, pre American involvement in the Vietnam War, post Korean War: a time in the USA when life was simple, straightforward and the lines between the sexes and sex roles were crisply drawn and severely delineated. It was a time when men and women were pigeon-holed into unrealistic modes of behavior and anyone who ventured outside of these boundaries was thought of at best, weird at worst... perverted and in many states, criminal. Ennis himself, at an early age was witness to the ugly, disgusting results of a hate crime perpetrated on a Wyoming farmer who had lived many years with his partner. In most societies he would be venerated but in 1950's Wyoming... he became a target.
Director Ang Lee begins this film as both Ennis and Jack are waiting outside of a building, both looking for work, both down on their luck, both avoiding each other's eyes. We know, or those of us who have read the story know, what is to happen and so unfortunately we read more into that simple scene than there really is. But with all that aside, this scene of Ennis and Jack avoiding each other, dodging each others looks, staring at the ground, kicking up the dirt is nonetheless rife with sensuality and tension.
Ennis and Jack are inexorably drawn to each other through their proximity, loneliness and through a shared lack of tenderness and emotion in their lives: they are emotionally, physically and psychically bonded almost from the start. It is inevitable. It is Fate.
And so begins a Love affair that transcends social mores, time, marriages, children, extra-marital affairs and divorce.
Despite all that is going on in their lives, Ennis and Jack meet several times a year up on Brokeback mountain and rekindle and thereby re-ignite their emotional and physical attraction: there is no one around, they are free from their regular lives...they can love.
Much has been made of Heath Ledger's performance as Ennis and he gives what is without a doubt one of the finest performances of this year. Ennis is a quiet, stoic man and he is troubled and frankly scared by how deeply he feels for Jack. As he showed us first in "Monster's Ball," Ledger is capable of digging way deep down into his gut and imbuing his performances with an unflinching frankness and truth that we can neither ignore nor help to be moved by.
Gyllenhall's Jack is the younger of the two: he's fun, he's a little crazy and unfortunately he wants a lot, lot more than Ennis is able to give him. Gyllenhaal's hang-dog, frisky puppy of a performance is full of warmth and light: the kind of transcendent light that shines out from a soul full of love, understanding and acceptance.
"Brokeback Mountain" is devastating in both its presentation, its performances and its tragic denouement. This movie is not for everyone. But if you are willing to open up your heart and mind a bit to let in its beauty, emotionality and sensuality you will not be disappointed. In fact... you will be renewed.