BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

Director: Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Ice Storm, Sense & Sensibility)
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal

So it turns out that the gay cowboy movie is quite a lot more than just a gay cowboy movie. One of the best films of 2005, this story is bursting with quite a lot of exceptional material and only some of it is exclusively about homosexuality or cowboys. Oh, in the foreground this is absolutely a love story between two Wyoming men, but much of this story is relevant to any love forbidden by society, or religion, or class, or ideology. In a way it’s a story of how a society can be so absurdly and obviously wrong, but more to the point it’s a story of two lovers doing what they can to enjoy their short lives in that wickedly confused society.

Brokeback Mountain begins with these two men working as sheepherders on a mountain in Wyoming for a summer. They are alone for a brief time in the spectacular world of the American Rockies. This first third of the film is simply gorgeous in most every way. There are beautiful shots of the Rockies and the wilderness and the men sharing these wonderful things. Once the characters are forced back into society, the film becomes more complicated and less purely beautiful, but no less evocative. They marry women and father children and make money because that is what men do. Eventually they come to realize what they’ve really missed by neglecting their own love. By this time they’ve experienced enough in life to know fully how dangerous what they are doing is. They truly were risking their lives in this cowboy society. At one point Ledger’s character tells a story of a couple of tough old queers who shared their lives in his hometown when he was a child. They ended up dead. This is a real possibility for the men in this story, and a painful one. They must remain hidden.

This script is sharply written, and it deeply evokes the lives of these two men. We see the struggles for money, and to some degree acceptance. We see how they struggle to maintain all of their relationships, not just a sexual one. We see how their hidden homosexuality affects others. Most wonderfully in my opinion, we see how their homosexuality is a much more rich and complicated subject than most of the nurture versus nature arguments can fathom. We see sexual love, and emotional love, and how those two are intertwined. We see sexual repression and emotional repression and how these two can be intertwined. It’s a wonderful story, exceptionally well written, well told, and beautifully shot. It’s also filled with fine acting, and not just by the main characters - although Ledger’s repressed cowboy (and only some of that is sexual repression) is an exceptional creation. I hope he receives an Oscar nod for his work. I also expect Ang Lee to get a nomination, as well as the scriptwriters (one of whom is Larry McMurtry I should note).

Standouts: Excellent direction, photography, acting, and script. This was a beautiful movie in many ways. I think it has a chance to turn into a "classic" of film.
Blowouts: Almost nothing was seriously wrong.

Grade: A+

1/04/2006