One of the most compelling movies this season is the much-talked-about Oscar nominee Brokeback Mountain. Faithfully based on the short story written by Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain is the chronology of a special friendship between two ranch hands, Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) that begins in the summer of 1963 and continues on for two decades.
They come together as two young men looking to earn a living herding sheep and tending camp in the vast Wyoming countryside. For a brief summer in time, they discovered a bond, a companionship, that was uniquely theirs. But it is a simple life that inevitably becomes complicated when feelings develop beyond the hardscrabble sex. Both men move on – to work hard, get married and raise kids – but they would never ever get beyond the emotional terrain of Brokeback Mountain.
The celebrated Ang Lee lassoes his actors into outstanding performances. He tightly reins in the internal conflicts of Ennis and Jack so that the repressed passions implode, and not explode, in rhythm to the towering vistas of virgin landscapes and the desolate decay of backwater towns. Heath Ledger’s Ennis is full of corked rage and inarticulate yearning: when he and Jack Twist are separated for the first time, he stops to spill his guts out in an alley by the dusty roadside, pounding his head on the wall. He is a man of few words, but then again, his actions speak louder than his words. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack is the insatiable idealist who dares to dream that he and Ennis could live their lives freely in the wide open spaces of Wyoming and Texas.
But what greater tragedy could there be than the love that cannot dare speak its name? One of the most memorable scenes of the movie is the first reunion of Ennis and Jack four years after Brokeback Mountain. The two friends rush to greet each other, and welcome each other with such intensity, so starved for each other’s presence, that Ennis’ neglected wife, Alma (touchingly essayed by Michelle Williams), could only stand back in shock and envy.
In the years that pass, the efforts of Ennis and Jack to preserve the special summer of their carefree youth become more important to them, and these impact heavily on their families, as both grow emotionally distant to everyone else but each other. Ennis eventually divorces his wife while Jack’s relationship with his flirty rodeo queen Lureen (played by Anne Hathaway) turns dry. The happiness that the two men seek eludes them, until the fateful end.
Brokeback Mountain is beautifully photographed. Most scenes, especially those featuring the natural grandeur of mountains and streams, are handled like postcard shots. The lead actors are frequently framed like male models in fashion ads: ruggedly individual and handsome. Yet the hardships of cowboy life are not romanticized: the viewer can feel and smell the sweat and grime on Ennis as he washes his naked body with leftover hot water at the campsite, and on Jack as he washes his clothes au naturel by the flowing river.
Ang Lee intuitively paces the emotional ride of the film: it is not, after all, a clichéd cowboy movie. There is no "action" like chases nor shootouts. Nor is it a traditional love story. In the book and in the movie, both Ennis and Jack know they’re not gay, they simply have no idea what they are. As Jack laments, "You’re too much for me, Ennis… I wish I knew how to quit you."
What makes Brokeback Mountain compelling is that it is a story of the heart as a rugged cowboy: simple, straightforward and struggling to be free. For trapped between the cinematic contrasts of idyllic expansive landscapes and cramped broken-down houses remains the image of Ennis pressing his face onto the fabric of the dead Jack’s unwashed shirt, breathing in the scent of memory of what was lost, and what could have been.