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| Brokeback Mountain |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 134 |
| Public Rating: 8.76 (174 votes) |
Director: Ang Lee |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama/Western |
Year: 2005 |
| Writer(s): Larry McMutry, Diana Ossana, E. Annie Proulx (short story) |
| Distributor: Focus Features |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Based on a short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author E. Annie Proulx and directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility), Brokeback Mountain, a tragic, modern western with two characters derailed by social circumstances and personal inhibitions from establishing a long-term relationship together, will be dismissed or denigrated by some uncomfortable with the subject matter as a "gay-cowboy movie," which suggests Brokeback Mountain was produced as a self-consciously controversial film (and thus Oscar-bait) or to target a specific, potentially profitable demographic (i.e., gay men, progressives). While Brokeback Mountain's episodic structure proves to be problematic, Ang Lee’s typically restrained, unsentimental direction, rugged, iconic imagery, and in particular, Heath Ledger’s emotionally authentic central performance as the withdrawn, tormented central character, elevate Brokeback Mountain into “important film” territory and one worth watching despite admittedly minor reservations.
1963, Wyoming. Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), laconic and taciturn, poor and penniless, and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), a sociable, self-confident type, first meet outside a trailer, looking for work. Ennis and Jack are hoping to be hired as sheepherders for the summer season on Brokeback Mountain. Left mostly to their own devices for the summer, and despite being ordered to sleep separately (Jack must watch over the sheep at night, while Ennis remains below at their campground), a particularly cold night sends a drunken Ennis into the main tent. Casual contact leads to frenzied, awkward lovemaking, followed by a rattled Ennis' declaration the next morning that he's not "queer." Jack agrees with him, but the men continue their relationship through a near-idyllic summer.
With the summer and their work as sheepherders at an end, Ennis decides to end their relationship. Ennis hopes to marry his childhood sweetheart, Alma (Michelle Williams), raise a family, and hopefully own a ranch one day. For his part, Jack hopes to become a rodeo champion. For the next four years, Ennis scratches out a living as a ranch hand, while Alma gives birth to two daughters. Jack, going nowhere fast on the rodeo circuit, meets and marries a local beauty queen, Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway), the daughter of a wealthy Texas businessman, L.D. Newsome (Graham Beckel). Jack becomes L.D.'s top salesman, ensuring himself a materially conformable future (even as his emotional and physical needs are left unfulfilled). Lureen gives birth to a son.
It's Jack, eager for Ennis' renewed companionship, that finds Ennis after more than four years. Jack suggests that they go on a weekend fishing trip, the first of many over the next decade, with a self-negating Ennis hesitant to turn their idyllic retreats into something permanent. Ennis' fears the potential opprobrium of wives, friends, and family to his relationship with Jack (unsurprising given the setting and the pre-Stonewall, pre-gay rights time period). Ennis' self-abnegation leads a cycle of self-denial and the eventual disintegration of his other relationships. Jack, the better adjusted of the two men, nonetheless leads a covert, risky life. As the men grow older, the conflict over their respective futures, alone and together, leads in only one, tragic direction.
Contrary to early, positive reports (not to mention winning the top prize, the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture, at the Venice Film Festival earlier this fall), Brokeback Mountain is far from a perfect film. The problems with Brokeback Mountain can be traced back to the episodic nature of Proulx's short story, which first appeared in The New Yorker in 1997, and the screenplay adaptation by Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment, The Last Picture Show) and Diana Ossana. Proulx's spare story and the adaptation both cover a twenty-year span in the lives of the characters. Once the central conflict has been articulated (i.e., whether Ennis and Jack will abandon their unfulfilling, inauthentic lives for a life together), Brokeback Mountain leaves the question unanswered for most of the film's running time, instead focusing on the consequences of Ennis' inflexibility and stubbornness and Jack’s growing frustrations and desperation.
Without the introduction of new layers of conflict, personal or social, Brokeback Mountain becomes static and repetitive, ultimately resorting to a clichéd plot device to resolve the seemingly irresolvable conflict between Ennis' emotional and physical desire for Jack and his desire to conform to heterosexual norms in his intolerant community, where even the appearance of homosexuality will be met with the threat of physical violence. Brokeback Mountain also leaves a pivotal, third-act event offscreen (with one character imagining the worst) and runs one or two scenes long (although the last scene is presumably meant to offer a central character the glimmer of hope, if not for romantic love, then for a renewed connection to his family).
Brokeback Mountain, however, displays Ang Lee’s typically meticulous attention to obtaining grounded, emotionally authentic performances from his cast. Western audiences first noticed Lee's skill with actors in Lee’s 1994 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm three years later. Like Brokeback Mountain, both films were period pieces, set in the early 19th-century and the 1970s respectively, with the central characters frustrated by social norms, shifting cultural values, and their own personal shortcomings, from emotional and personal fulfillment. In The Ice Storm, Lee obtained delicate, nuanced performances from an ensemble cast, which included a mix of experienced and young, less experienced actors (e.g., Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, and Elijah Wood).
As ensemble performances go, Brokeback Mountain is no different. Heath Ledger stands out as the emotionally repressed character, introverted Ennis. Playing a character of few words, Ledger has to rely on body language and subtle facial expressions to convey his character’s constantly changing emotional states. Jake Gyllenhaal acquits himself well, although his character’s extroversion makes his role, at least on the surface, less challenging (and less likely to draw attention from audiences and Academy members). Credit should also go Michelle Williams as Ennis’ long-suffering wife, Alma. With a character that could have easily slipped into caricature, Williams ensures Alma remains a grounded, sympathetic figure throughout the film, as much, if not more than, a victim as Ennis is to his inability to accept and live openly with his homosexuality.
Brokeback Mountain will undoubtedly appeal to gay men eager to see themselves depicted in a positive manner onscreen (a rarity, even with two other gay-themed films released in the last month, e.g., Rent, The Dying Gaul), but Brokeback Mountain is also meant to appeal to a larger, more opened-minded demographic willing to recognize or accept, however reluctantly, that the desires of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders) aren’t "abnormal" by any definition that reflects the commonalities, the universals of experience that, in essence, speak to our better natures and make us human (something, unfortunately, many social conservatives refuse to acknowledge). In short, the universal truths remain the same, regardless of sexual orientation.
© Mel Valentin, 9th December, 2005
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