Friday, December 9, 2005
Filmstew.com

Brokeback Mountain
Four years after lurking mightily in the shadows of Monster’s Ball, actor Heath Ledger strides forward thanks to another director willing to take risks.

By Anderson Jones


Brokeback Mountain began on the deep sleuth tip as a long short story by Annie Proulx (The Shipping News) in The New Yorker in 1997. Because of its brevity, Proulx's language is crisp and terse. Characters speak precisely and intensely about how they feel in this melancholic 20-year tale of love and remorse between two young ranch hands, whose affair begins on the fictional Brokeback Mountain. The story immediately caused a small stir among the gay and urbane.

Randy Quaid, who has a supporting role in the movie, says he stole that New Yorker issue from the gym to finish reading the story. Gus van Sant wanted to direct a movie version with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in the starring roles (What some would pay to see that...). For a while it looked like Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana's pitch-perfect adaptation would languish on the huge pile of good, but unmade scripts in this town. Its fate would echo The Front Runner, Patricia Nell Warren's seminal 1974 novel about a love affair between a college track coach and his out star runner. Tom Cruise and Paul Newman were rumored to be – ahem - attached for years.

But everything changed for Brokeback once director Ang Lee picked up the script. Lee, a master at cinematic repression, strained love and loss - see The Wedding Banquet, The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility - was the perfect match for Proulx's stark love story. Significantly, he is also heterosexual.

Lee then cast Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead roles. Both are sexy heartthrobs with a rabid male and female fan base. Both were potentially great actors, but their resumes, particularly Ledger's, needed more heft. One needed a big movie, the other needed critical acclaim to build on early heat. Depending on your perspective, they were completely interchangeable.

Brokeback Mountain begins in 1967 on a mountain where rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) meets poor rancher Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), after the pair are hired to baby sit grazing sheep for the summer. At first they are, at best, curious about one another; at worst, completely indifferent. Neither talks much and yet they fall into an easy rhythm with one another as they move up and down the hill, chasing off wolves and sharing a warm dinner by campfire.

Until one very cold night, Ennis and Jack have separate tents. Stuck together, Jack makes a move and Ennis responds by flipping him over in an intense bit of brief, lusty sex. Relax, their clothes stay on.

This thing - we'll call it love - strikes so quickly, like lightning, that they don't have words for it. They're only sure what it's not. ‘I ain't no queer,’ Ennis says to Jack. But they've crossed a boundary as friends, which in turn ultimately leads to a deeper more passionate bond.

After that summer passes, the boys return home and over the course of four years each marries (Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway) and starts a family, but they can't shake Brokeback Mountain. A metaphor, perhaps, for your first love or for love gone by. Brokeback represents that moment when you could finally define that funny feeling inside.

Lee captures that elusive emotion when Ennis and Jack reunite with the sort of kiss that leaves bruises and beard burn. It hurts so good. As their children age and as their marriages either dissolve or harden, the men plan ‘fishing trips’ to see each other, though an optimistic Jack wants more: a life on a ranch that Ennis tells him society won't allow.

Brokeback's critics say that it's a ‘safe’ gay movie because it plays like a straight love story. It's certainly better than most straight romantic comedies. Rumor Has It? Hello? Lots of my heterosexual friends have declared, ‘It's not a gay love story.’ Well, what is? Would more sex make it gayer? Line dancing? Characters more like Will & Grace's Jack?

If that's true and it's just a love story between two men, then gay people are halfway there. If two men f*cking in a tent and french kissing in Wyoming isn't gay, then same-sex unions should pose no threat. Some women aren't feeling it. I suspect that's because women are not internal creatures.

How could Ennis be in love with someone for 20 years and never say anything? Men get it. Ennis loves the way our fathers do, or the way we love our best friends. Or drinking buddies. Or fraternity brothers. His love is deeply felt but also deeply internalized.

Perhaps because he has an uncle who is an arm wrestling champion and gay, Heath Ledger captures this sense of repression and longing in a genuine, evocative way. His Ennis is deeply conflicted about the way he feels about Jack because, although he's less sophisticated, he's innately aware that it's a feeling that can get him killed even as it sets him free. Ledger is simply remarkable. You won't see a finer, more nuanced performance committed to film this year.

Brokeback Mountain proves that not only is love a force of nature, but that it's also often – deliriously - inexplicable. It's a profoundly moving story that's as devastating and heart-breaking as the best love stories of cinema: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Doctor Zhivago.

Those love stories where the boy doesn't get always get the, well, boy in the end. Sadly, most gay filmmakers haven't been as insightful or as daring as three ostensibly straight men. What's up with that? But Lee has crafted a film that has the potential to move mountains of intolerance and prejudice while changing the world.

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Article edited by HH Administration.