Deborah Lipp

Brokeback Mountain (2005) 10/10

In 1963, ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and rodeo rider Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) spend a summer sheepherding on Brokeback Mountain. There they begin a romance that endures for almost twenty years.

In the movies, love stories are generally either romantic comedies or tragedies. In a romantic comedy, what keeps the lovers apart is trivial and amusing. In a tragedy, what keeps the lovers apart is profoundly important. In fact, it is the whole point.

The reason I say this is because so many people are saying things like ‘Brokeback Mountain is a universal love story,’ or ‘It’s not that it’s gay, it’s that it’s love.’ Yeah right sure. This is called apologetics.

Brokeback Mountain is the story of star-crossed lovers. The fate that crosses them is that they are both men, without a place in the world to be who they are. Stories of impossible loves are not generic, in fact, their particularity is their entire reason for being. Whether it’s the Capulets and the Montagues or the Jets and the Sharks, lovers divided by society exist to tell us something about society.

Love itself is universal, and so we all relate to it as we watch a good story (and Brokeback is excellent) unfold. Thus we see the cultural, social, racial, or interpersonal issue that divides the lovers in a new light. That’s the power of fiction.

So make no mistake; Brokeback Mountain is a gay movie. It’s also one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. Ennis and Jack each struggles differently with the closet he is in. Jack wants to find a way out; he dreams of a world where he and Ennis can ranch together, in a word, he longs to be gay. Ennis despises who and what he is; he longs to be straight. The tragedy of the story is that neither man can fulfill his longing, they have only each other, only their “fishing trips,” the lives they live are empty.

The performances are stunning, particularly Heath Ledger, who holds his body tighter and tighter, closing himself up until you wonder that he can walk. Yet he seems about to burst. But Gyllenhaal’s BAFTA last night was well-deserved too.

Setting and scene are remarkable. Everything in the movie looks like a prison, except when the men are together in the mountains. Every home is too small, every hall too narrow, every angle too sharp. Then, when they’re together, the sky is huge, the world is open, and you can feel your own shoulders un-tense as at last there’s some space.

(spoilers below the fold) » Read more..