Quiet Power

Rating: 10/10 (23 December 2005)

The reason westerns have had such appeal all these years is the best of them transport you to a world where power is silent rather than shouted. Few words can display as much pain, agony, anguish and love when placed in the right hands as a 100 pages of straight dialogue. And that's what happens in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. The quiet is both the hiding and the comfort. Two young cowboys take a job shepherding sheep along the mountain and in the course find each other. Over the next twenty years that relationship affects every aspect of their lives as they continually have to make the choice between true love and marriages that were formed not of convenience but of true affection. Ang Lee has created a world that sucks you in viscerally from the first gorgeous shot and you would love to thank Avy Kaufman personally for the casting choices. Jake Gyllenhall's outwarded passion is undeniably appealing, Michelle Williams is absolutely heart-wrenching to watch (and her growth in films such as STATION AGENT has been noted), and Anne Hathaway as a spirited, wealthy Texas gal breaks any mold that PRINCESS DIARIES might have placed on her. But the movie is Heath Ledger's, who has been sadly underrated for many years, and whose intense and yet kind performance is riveting. You can feel his entire being just underneath the skin with only the skin holding him in. He would make John Wayne proud. It is not a gay cowboy movie, it is a deeply layered love story that any person is lucky to have been given a chance to watch. In life we don't always fall in love with who we are expected to. Why should that differ on film?