Movie Review: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)–****
Most great love stories don’t have happy endings. So goes Brokeback Mountain, the first great love story of the 21st Century. It’s impossible to calculate the cultural impact of a mainstream film about two men falling deeply in love in 1960s Wyoming (so tenderly called the “gay cowboy movie” in the major media). What I can gauge though is the emotional scope of a film that brilliantly and tragically captures the complexities of human relations.
There’s no doubt that Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) will fall in love. As the two men meet waiting to get instructions on their sheepherding job, glances are exchanged. It’s not love at first sight, but Jack and Ennis notice each other in a way that two men in their place and time were not supposed to notice each other.
They quickly bond over beans and whiskey as the herd sheep on Brokeback Mountain. Ennis tells his story of parental loss. Jack shares the inadequacies his father sees in him. On a cold night, they have sex and so starts a passionate relationship that will shape the two men’s lives.
The story of Brokeback Mountain spans two decades. The lovers will meet many times, taking short, quick breaths of a love that should have been deeply inhaled. Despite marriage and children and jobs, Jack, as he says, just doesn’t know how to quit Ennis, and Ennis, Jack.
The two men, however, have distinctly different ways of dealing with their feelings, and that is where this movie gains steam. While Jack tries to cope with his sexuality by accepting it and trying to avoid the consequences of it, Ennis fights it, hides it and feels guilty because of it. Both men get married, but Ennis’ marriage, which was supposed to be legitimate, goes wrong. Jack’s marriage to a business-minded, entrepreneur’s daughter lets him ignore the usual masculine role.
For that reason, Jack is the lighter of the two characters, making Ledger’s distinctly nuanced performance as Ennis the film’s major standout. Ledger’s control of the stoic Ennis is miraculous. As Ennis’ personal life goes out of control, Ledger is heartbreaking. The young actor’s turn in The Brothers Grimm is what made believe in him as an actor. Thanks to Brokeback Mountain, I maybe able to call him the finest actor of his (and my) generation.
Gyllenhaal is fantastic in his own right, while Ann Hathaway and Michelle Williams, Jack and Ennis’ wives respectively, have graduated from the teen roles for which they were once known. These performances, however, may just be a symptom of working under the direction of Ang Lee.
Lee, whose work with complicated love stories is well known, directs one of his finest works here. Though not as beautiful or epic as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain is a small and powerful drama that is better compared to his martial arts classic than any of his fine English language films. It’s not his best work, but with films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Eat Drink Man Woman on his record, saying something like that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lee’s a director who made the hokey Hulk script into something of a Greek tragedy. Here he tells the love story with the perfect combination of subtle sensitivity and emotional power. No director other than Lee could have made this film.
Other films, like the Peruvian drama No Se Lo Digas a Nadie, have dealt with the topic of sexuality versus social norms, but none have done it in the grand Hollywood fashion of Brokeback Mountain. It’s an old-Hollywood love story with a modern twist. Maybe that’s what it takes for a gay romance to be made. A stellar cast. A talented director. An unconventional story told in a conventional manner. Brokeback Mountain may break down barriers as it breaks hearts, but it should always first be considered the grand Lee film that it truly is.
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