Brokeback Mountain Review

Never a man to shy away from a challenge, director Ang Lee brings us Brokeback Mountain, a big screen adaptation of the controversial novel from the award winning author Annie Proulx. Returning to Lee’s oft explored themes of internal turmoil and emotional estrangement, this heartrending film is as shockingly emotive as it is spartan. It tells the deeply passionate, darkly honest tale of two homosexual lovers, set in the American West during the nineteen sixties to nineteen eighties. Heath Ledger delivers a breathtaking performance as the restrained and reticent Ennis Del Mar to Jake Gyllenhaal’s emotionally demonstrative Jack Twist.

The two meet as they are preparing for a season of sheep herding on Brokeback mountain, under the management of Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid). During the months of isolation, their initial friendship develops into a powerful relationship which even the central characters never fully articulate. Despite their connection, both men marry and have children. It is made very clear during the film what happens to those that flout convention. Four years after their season on the mountain, Ennis receives a postcard from Jack suggesting they meet up, to which he characteristically responds with a laconic: “You bet!” Their reunion scene proves to be one of the most genuinely moving and powerfully erotic moments in recent cinema.

Occasionally meeting in the guise of fishing buddies, the pair continue a disjointed affair which leaves Jack in particular deeply unsatisfied. Although one cannot doubt the depth of Ennis’s emotions, he copes better with this denial, saying: “If you can’t fix it Jack, you gotta stand it.” Jack increasingly begins to believe in a fantasy world where the two of them can be together, but Ennis knows this can never happen, telling Jack: “Bottom line is… we’re around each other an’… this thing, it grabs hold of us again… at the wrong place… at the wrong time… an’ we’re dead.”

Ledger who, prior to this film, had been typecast as a more predictable leading man, shows his true acting colours, bringing Ennis to life with startling sincerity. The degree of sentiment he manages to convey in a glance or a word is astonishing. In the defining scene where Ennis discovers his shirt in Jack’s room, Ledger wordlessly demonstrates the devastating pain of realisation and the agony of loss. Gyllenhall’s performance, although solid, seems to lack depth when compared to Ledger’s remarkable portrayal of a man inextricably bound by fear and shame.

Lee displays his talent for depicting the innate character of the country itself. The sweeping landscapes are beautiful, brutal and vast, creating a visual impact that represents the gulf existing between the two lovers. The wild and unruly terrain characterizes both the unstoppable inevitability of love versus the immovable bigotry of their world.

Brokeback Mountain tackles a subject which some might still consider contentious, but with Lee’s intelligent and sensitive treatment of this absorbing story, even those with the most extreme preconceptions may be sorely tempted to look at the world a little differently.