By Jonathan Cribbs
Senior staff writer
There’s a moment in Brokeback Mountain when the film’s two main male characters, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, check to make sure no one is watching, hide behind a stairwell and then embrace in a passionate kiss for which they’ve both waited four years.
Ennis’s wife, Alma, standing beside the front door, catches them together. Her husband isn’t exactly as straight as she thought he was. Her marriage, at this point, is ruined. And for some reason, an entire theater in downtown Washington erupts into laughter. Why? Because even in 2005, what appears gay, to most people, is still goofy.
The most interesting thing about director Ang Lee’s new, ballyhooed film, Brokeback Mountain, is what the movie tells the audience about itself. In this Will & Grace/Queer Eye for the Straight Guy world, we’ve taken the gay man, and to make him palatable for prime time, we’ve made him funny.
That sort of thinking doesn’t work with Brokeback Mountain, an uncommonly good film that manages to capture a very intense and real love between two men while avoiding the sort of preaching, shocking or hokey melodrama that often makes films such as this stereotypical.
Brokeback Mountain succeeds not because it sees itself as a film breaking new ground but rather as a simple story about forbidden love and freedom.
Lee’s intimate departure from his typical high-flying action theatrics tells the story of Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger), two cowboys who find themselves working together for a summer, herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming, spending their nights by the fire, cooking, hunting – machismo stuff, essentially.
Jack is a romantic, who coaxes the hard-scrabble, reluctant Ennis into the relationship. A soon-to-be-much-talked-about sex scene is particularly gripping, as Ledger does a phenomenal job portraying a man deeply conflicted with his love, his responsibilities to his family and his general wariness about homosexuality. (When he was a child, his father forced him to look at the bloodied body of a rancher who was murdered because he was gay.) He pushes Jack away but is unable to resist what apparently everything else inside of him seems to be saying.
And then summer is over. Jack and Ennis return to their hometowns and marry: Ennis to Alma (Michelle Williams) and Jack to Lureen (Anne Hathaway). Life for both of them becomes inescapably bleaker. Ennis, with two children and a wife who works at a grocery store, yearns for the romantic simplicity of Brokeback. Jack finds himself working as a farm equipment salesman for Lureen’s hard-to-please father. Four years later, they find each other and their Brokeback “fishing” rendezvous continue.
But as they fall deeper in love, their ability to hide it from everyone weakens, and pretty soon wives and family begin to suspect what’s up, especially when Alma catches them. Jack soon begins to grow unsatisfied with their occasional romance, wanting more, while Ennis refuses to abandon his straight life for true love.
Ledger’s performance is flawless if not Oscar-worthy. For the past several months, Brokeback Mountain has been reduced and referred to as “That Gay Cowboy Movie” because, frankly, the premise out of context lends itself to humor and satire. But Ledger’s portrayal of an everyman who finds himself unable to give in to what he wants without sacrificing a great deal in 1960s America, is a classic performance.
Lee redeems himself after the painfully disappointing Hulk. Brokeback Mountain is one of the most beautifully photographed movies of the year, and Lee knows how to frame shots that exude emotion rather than simply relying on the characters to provide it alone. His contrasts between impossibly romantic Brokeback Mountain panoramas and the colorless earth tones of small-town Wyoming life help the viewer feel what these characters yearn for and what they feel they have to settle for.
Brokeback Mountain is probably a landmark film for reasons good and bad (the media love a good Hollywood movie controversy, and if the film’s good, they love to build it up). But the movie works because it looks at its characters honestly and unflinchingly, and it finds a way to mesh the incredible complications of gay romance with the touching, natural connection of two people deeply in love.
The Verdict
Movie: Brokeback Mountain
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger
Grade B+
Contact reporter Jonathan Cribbs at cribbsdbk@gmail.com.
