Cowboy Gyllenhaal's long coming of age
FILM REVIEW
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JAKE Gyllenhaal is getting used to being called a risk-taker. As the star of Sam Mendes's Jarhead and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, he's found himself in two of this winter's most talked-about films. The consensus seems to be that he's a brave actor who is willing to lay his career on the line for something in which he believes: which at the moment means he's sitting in a suite in London's Dorchester hotel talking about appearing in a film about the first Gulf War while the second one is still ongoing, and a movie about gay ranch-hands in Wyoming that required him to kiss Heath Ledger. Despite the current media hysteria surrounding the latter event - we'll get to that in a moment - it's Gyllenhaal's appearance in Jarhead that's the more surprising. Based on ex-marine Anthony Swofford's surreal account of his experiences in Kuwait, Gyllenhaal plays "Swoff", one of the thousands of "Jarheads" (the term refers to the distinctive marine haircut) sent to the Persian Gulf to participate in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-1. It's a film about the mental deterioration of the soldiers, who were trained for combat and didn't see any action, and it has an ambivalent tone, muddied further by its acknowledgement that all war films - regardless of their filmmaker's intentions - end up as a celebration of the military.

Given that Gyllenhaal was raised in an avowedly liberal household, and that his own official website links to lots of liberal causes, including the anti-war organisation Not In Our Name, was he ever troubled about making a film that might be construed as pro-war?

"I did have a real judgment about the military before I went in," he says, perching his 6'2" frame attentively on the edge of the sofa. "I saw the military in total connection with the administration. And I think I had a judgment because my mom has a very clear attitude to aggressive action, which I don't 100 per cent agree with, particularly after this film. After doing this, and being involved with it, even on the periphery, it's changed my life. I have two friends who are over there now, and I just think that what they do every day is extraordinary."

Gyllenhaal is not sitting on the fence. He doesn't like the current fight over the troops in which both US political parties are engaged. He also says he's learned a lot about the com-plexity of the marine mindset from the real Swofford: "The thing that I like about Tony is that he has a profound regret about everything he experienced and also a profound appreciation. He walks a line: he feels obliged to go back there now, even though he doesn't agree with what's going on. That to me is a real marine. He's conflicted."

In America, the film has come under attack from the right for being unpatriotic and detrimental to marine morale and from the left for not making a blatant enough anti-war statement. Gyllenhaal can understand the hostility but, as it turns out, the furore is relatively modest compared to that over his other movie, Brokeback Mountain.

Another literary adaptation, this time based on E Annie Proulx's haunting short story about a couple of cowboys who unexpectedly fall in love with each other, the film has been crudely dubbed "The Gay Cowboy Movie" since it won the Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival. Gyllenhaal and co-star Heath Ledger, meanwhile, have faced a barrage of snickering questions from infantile hacks who can't seem to get past the idea that, yes, they had to kiss each other.

More depressing is that so many journalists keep insisting that both actors have demonstrated tremendous courage, thus perpetuating the myth that playing a gay character is a potential career killer, which will come as news to Keanu Reeves, who snogged River Phoenix in 1991's My Own Private Idaho before starring in The Matrix. It really shouldn't be a big deal, should it?

"I feel exactly the same way," nods Gyllenhaal. "Every jour-nalist says, 'oh you take such a risk, because of this and that'. My first response is 'why would I do anything in a career that wasn't risky or challenging?' Why would I sit around thinking, 'I need to appease this person or that person?' I'd be miserable.

"Then again, I might just be naïve, because in the States there is a very clear split in opinion at this point about gay marriage, so I can see why people would say that this might be risky. I think that this is a very conventional love story done within a very unconventional context. More than that, it takes an American icon [the cowboy] and flips it on its head. But I do agree with you. To me, it's not really a risk.

"When I read the script it was a beautiful love story. And love scenes are love scenes. They're incredibly uncomfortable, no matter who you're with. But, as I've noticed, people will spin stuff the way they want to spin it no matter what I say."

He's not kidding. In addition to all the nudge-nudge comments, there's another theory that, in acting terms, gay is the new disabled: a guaranteed way for straight actors to get recognition come awards season. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he sighs. "I don't think any of us had that idea in our minds. But you know, I saw some cartoon of Heath and me recently and I was like, Jesus, if we knew how people were going to respond, if we knew they were going to ask us all the questions they ask us about the film, I don't know if we could have made it." He breaks off for a moment. "You know, now it probably is a risk, even though it didn't start out as one."

If Gyllenhaal sounds a little weary of the media circus, he's just relieved it's only been a recent phenomenon. Though he started acting professionally aged 11, he avoided the pitfalls of child stardom thanks to his parents, who stopped him doing films that would have kept him out of school or away from home for long periods. "I definitely think having grown up and been to school and having my friends has helped. I mean, s**t, if I'd had to do this as a young kid..."

Still, it's not as if Gyllenhaal didn't get a taste of showbiz glamour during his childhood: he grew up in a well-heeled Hollywood enclave; his mother is a screenwriter, his dad a successful film and TV director; his elder sister Maggie is one of the best actresses of her generation; his godmother is Jamie Lee Curtis; and he was even taught to drive by family friend Paul Newman. With that kind of pedigree it's perhaps unsurprising that when he finally did break into movies it was in 2001's Donnie Darko, a film of rare intelligence and beguiling mystery. It's the film he would like to be identified with more than any other - something that looked likely after he followed it with a series of interesting but essentially similar roles as soulful loners in Lovely & Amazing, The Good Girl and Moonlight Mile. In the past he's said these represented his "teenager in transition" period, but considering that his first big Hollywood film, last summer's eco-disaster thriller The Day After Tomorrow, also saw the now 25-year-old playing a geeky high school outsider, was he never worried about being typecast as the perpetual manchild?

"You mean is that why I did the Gay Cowboy Movie?" he mocks.

Actually, I was going to quote Mendes to him. In a recent interview, the director said that he felt Gyllenhaal had not really stretched himself as an actor and that the reason he embraced the physical and emotional demands of Jarhead was because on some level he felt he'd perhaps had it too easy. Does he agree? "I agree and disagree. It is the family business, but I think I do things because I love them. I did [the physical stuff] on Jarhead, because Jarhead was about abuse. But yeah, there probably is something to that theory."

Both films prove that he has made an effortless transition into proper adult roles. He's not going back to playing teenagers, either. He's currently filming as the lead in Fight Club director David Fincher's new film, Zodiac. He plays a cartoonist obsessed with San Francisco's "Zodiac" serial killer of the 1960s. "It's his best film yet," enthuses Gyllenhaal - if it ends up being his, too, we're in for a treat.

'Police officers and firefighters are brave ... we're just acting'

2005 HAS been a turning point for Heath Ledger. He moved to a new home in Brooklyn, New York, and became a father, welcoming daughter Matilda into the world with Michelle Williams, his girlfriend and co-star in Brokeback Mountain.

His emotional work in that film, directed by Ang Lee, has announced his presence as a serious - and Golden Globe-nominated - actor, and one who may be headed toward his first Academy Award.

Ask which of these developments made the biggest impact on this Australia-born actor and he just chuckles.

"What do you think?'' he asks rhetorically. "Look, Michelle and I are forever in debt to Ang, in a much smaller sense for giving us this movie, but on a grander scale for kind of putting us together and giving us this beautiful life and this little friend of ours we have floating around."

Ledger, who met Williams last year when the two were filming Brokeback, teeters on the edge of giddiness as he says this, a reaction that might be nausea-inducing if it didn't seem, well, so heartfelt. In fact, heartfelt is a word that could easily be used to describe Ledger's performance as Ennis Del Mar, a tortured loner who falls in love with fellow cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) despite his belief that homosexuality is wrong. Some other words that effusive critics have used to describe his Mountain transformation are "breathtaking", "astonishing" and "extraordinary".

Despite the flattering adjectives and the aura of Oscar buzz, Ledger, 26, seems to have his head in the right place: "The only time [the Academy Award talk] surrounds my day is on days like today." Though he's honoured by the notion of a nomination, he realises earning a golden statuette isn't the only definition of outstanding work.

"The thing that strikes me as strange is that we're all in the same race, but none of us are performing the same sport," he says of his fellow actors. "None of us started at the same spot, nor do we finish at the same spot. But we all get compared and thrown into a mix. It all feels a little manufactured and filled with false senses of success and false senses of failure."

He is equally candid when asked about Brokeback Mountain's controversial subject - even as a recent story suggested that he and Gyllenhaal were risking their careers by playing gay cowboys, a proposition he dismisses: "I never really felt I had anything at risk. If, at the end of the day, it is a risk to create a love story... if, in fact, that is a crime and that's something that's worth judging someone for, then quite frankly I don't want to be in an industry that restricts creativity in that way."

He has been an active player in that industry for the past six years, making his US film debut in 1999's 10 Things I Hate About You, a teen satire based on Taming of the Shrew. After serenading Julia Stiles in a football stadium in that, he moved into more dramatic territory, appearing in such movies as The Patriot, Monster's Ball and The Four Feathers. But none of those performances hinted at Ledger's ability to disappear so deeply into a character as he does in Brokeback Mountain. As soon as he appears on screen as Ennis - his eyes squeezed into slits, his mouth twisted in an anguished knot - Ledger immediately conveys the profound heartache this cowboy hides.

Asked whether he would define Ennis - who is married to Alma, the long-suffering wife played by Williams, during part of the film - as gay, bisexual or straight but confused, Ledger is reluctant to categorise.

"I generally don't think most situations can be labelled as black or white," he says. "He's obviously gay in the sense that he has fallen in love with another man, and this seemed to ignite something within his soul. But whether or not he had sought to find that in another man before, I doubt it."

Working on Brokeback Mountain meant new territory for Ledger and Gyllenhaal, too: filming love scenes with another man, including an intense initial encounter in a tent on an exceptionally chilly night.

Ledger admits to having been nervous but says he used his anxiety, an emotion Ennis shares during that moment, to make the scene more genuine.

"No matter what, when you're shooting love scenes, it's kind of uncomfortable, and this was certainly going to be one of those," he says. "But it's also like, f*** it, we're not kids. We're professionals. We have a responsibility to tell it like it is."

Telling it like it is may mean that filmgoers uncomfortable with gay themes will avoid the film altogether, something he accepts.

"The only people who are truly going to hate this film are the people who won't go see it," he says. "And that's fine. That's their own personal issues they have to deal with."

But he doesn't agree with the suggestion he has been daring or brave for playing a gay man.

"In my opinion, New York City police officers are brave. It takes courage to be a firefighter," he says. "We're just acting."

JEN CHANEY

• Brokeback Mountain is in cinemas nationwide from 6 January.

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=2462442005
Last updated: 27-Dec-05 00:04 GMT