Brokeback Mountain (3 September 2005)
directed by Ang Lee
starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Randy Quaid, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Scott Michael Campbell, Kate Mara, Linda Cardellini, Roberta Maxwell, Peter McRobbie, Jake Church
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MPAA rating: Studio: Focus Features, River Road Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Good Machine, This Is That Productions Script: Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana Based on the book by: E. Annie Proulx Music: Gustavo Santaolalla Running time: 134 minutes Tags: Drama; homosexuality; rodeo; Romance; sheep; short story adaptation; Texas; Wyoming Tactical strength: [10/10]
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for sexuality, nudity, language and some violence
In case you haven't heard about Brokeback Mountain, it tells the story of two cowboys that spend the summer of 1963 on a mountain in Wyoming tending a herd of sheep. The two boys fall in love, but due to the prevailing attitude toward homosexuals, they go their separate ways at the end of the summer. The two cowboys each get married and have children, but they continue to rendezvous periodically over the next twenty years and continue their sexual relationship. Instead of dwelling on a description of the plot, I will describe the elements of Brokeback Mountain that I think set it apart from almost all other movies.
Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar provides a remarkable performance, demonstrating an amazing range of emotion. In Brokeback Mountain, Ledger sounds like Tommy Lee Jones, and it took me a bit to get used to his voice. You see right away that Ledger has given a performance way beyond the comic characters in The Brothers Grimm or A Knight's Tale and with greater depth than in his dramatic roles in The Order and The Four Feathers. We learn about Ennis's father's homophobia that he tried to pass on to his sons, and we see the conflict in Ennis between his feelings and his upbringing. In Ledger's performance, you can easily see that Ennis has true feelings for his wife Alma (Michelle Williams) and his children. He just happens to have deeper feelings for Jack Twist (Jake Gillenhaal). Gillenhaal does a good job portraying Ennis's sex-starved partner, but Ledger displays the true emotional range of the situations.
Director Ang Lee establishes a mood of longing and despair that permeates the film and lingers with the viewer long after watching the film. The landscape scenes establish the bleak beauty of the Wyoming mountains, but also establish the poverty of the cowboy lifestyle. Against this bleak background, we can see how the characters would cherish a long-term, loving relationship. Lee also doesn't overload the film with homosexual relations. He treats the relationship between Ennis and Jack as any other director would handle a standard forbidden romance. We see scenes that establish and reinforce their relationship, but the story doesn't dwell on the fact that the relationship exists between two men.
I also have to recognize the job done by the makeup and costuming departments. These groups do an excellent job at aging the characters and using the setting to show us the passage of time. For example, Jack's and Ennis's extended sideburns tell us we have moved into the 1970s, and we don't need any placards at the bottom of the screen telling us "5 years later."
I haven't read Annie Proulx's short story, but I would bet that she included this interesting symbolism. In many families, the first son gets the same name as the father, and everyone call that son "Junior." In our society, we expect Junior to "wear the pants" as it were and take over the father's role as leader of the tribe. In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis and Alma name their first child -- a daughter -- after Alma and they routinely call her "Junior." I find it interesting that in Ennis's family, his firstborn daughter has the symbolic role of carrying on the family name and traditions. This symbolic naming of the one to carry on the future generations seems to indicate that even at the start of their marriage, Ennis and Anna realized something different about their relationship.
All the elements of Brokeback Mountain come together to create a transcendent experience that lingers in your mind for days after you watch the film. You wonder about which version of Jack's demise to believe. You have the haunting image of Jack's parents' spare house whitewashed inside and out lingering in your head, and you wonder about how Jack must have felt he contaminated his parents' home. You wonder if a time will ever come that men like Ellis and Jack can express their love openly, without worrying about getting lynched. And you stand back in amazement at Ang Lee's accomplishment in making all these things echo about in your head with a melancholy that longs for the silence of an elevated mountain range in which to ponder their effects.
