MOVIE REVIEW
'Brokeback Mountain'
In director Ang Lee's groundbreaking film, two cowboys realistically struggle with their love.
By Kenneth Turan
Times Staff Writer

December 9, 2005


LA Times' Turan praises the film, opening his review this way:

"Brokeback Mountain" is a groundbreaking film because it isn't. It's a deeply felt, emotional love story that deals with the uncharted, mysterious ways of the human heart just as so many mainstream films have before it. The two lovers here just happen to be men.

Big star vehicles with homosexual protagonists are, of course, not new; one of them, 1993's "Philadelphia," even won a best actor Oscar for star Tom Hanks. But these films invariably have had an air of earnest special pleading about them, a sense that they'd rather do good in the world than tell a good story. Instead of emphasizing its apartness, "Brokeback Mountain" insists it is a romance like any other, and that makes all the difference.

And yet more insanely good ink for Heath Ledger:

"Brokeback Mountain" would not be the success it is without excellent acting across the board. Though he is hampered by an unconvincing aging job, Gyllenhaal brings a fine harum-scarum energy and feeling to Jack's character, and Williams, glummer than she ever was in "The Station Agent," illuminates all the corners of Alma's sadness. But, more than any of the others, Ledger brings this film alive by going so deeply into his character you wonder if he'll be able to come back. Aside from his small but strong part in "Monster's Ball," nothing in the Australian-born Ledger's previous credits prepares us for the power and authenticity of his work here as a laconic, interior man of the West, a performance so persuasive that "Brokeback Mountain" could not have succeeded without it. Ennis' pain, his rage, his sense of longing and loss are real for the actor, and that makes them unforgettable for everyone else.


Excerpts from the L.A.Times and OscarWatch.com