Moviemaker confuses lust for love in lonely shepherds. Movie fails as allegory for homosexuality in America.

Rating: 5/10 (21 January 2006)

Two hands at a sheep ranch have sex during one lonely summer, and continue the relationship into their adult life, creating love triangles with their future wives. It explores the power of homosexual lust in adult men. Later in life they face discrimination because of anti-gay stereotyping.
This movie is a story about how sex between two lonely young men gets confused with love. Some interpret the their relationship as a love story and see the movie as an allegory for homosexual lovers in 21st century American society, but this is a false analogy. The men don't really love each other, they don't do the things lovers do like take care for each other, communicate through letters or phone calls, laugh at each others jokes (very little smiling in this movie), or even go fishing together. The men are motived by good sex not love, and the movie explores the power of sex to complicate life, in this case tragically.
The best part is the relationship between Ennis and his wife Alma (Ledger and Williams). This relationship takes place in the real world not the pretend world on the mountain. Williams gives the best performance in the movie.
There are a number of distracting side plots, and in the end the movie peters out.