Pity and Fear

Rating: 10/10 (14 March 2006)

Okay, sorry, but here's another one of those reviews that start: "I've never been moved to comment on a movie before like this, but..."
Folks, there's a social phenomenon going on here, plain and simple. Just about everybody with an open mind who sees this movie seems to get swept right away by it. Read the previous user reviews - a sense of grief, sleepless nights, lines of dialogue popping unexpectedly into the mind, the desire to revisit the movie again and again - and make no mistake: this movie has become an instant classic, and we're privileged to be bobbing up and down in the wake as it spreads across the world.
Brokeback Mountain is going last for a long time. In 50 years, writers will be hunting down the last surviving members of the cast and crew in an effort to squeeze some new detail out of them to add to all the other books that will have been written about it by then, and those of us still alive will be thinking, "I saw it when it first came out and, boy, it really messed me up for a while."
Different people have different ideas about this movie. That's how it should be. Great art is always ambiguous. People have been arguing for 400 years about why Hamlet procrastinated or about what the smile on the Mona Lisa's face really means. The funny thing about great art is, all the different interpretations put up against it seem to work pretty well, no matter how different they seem to be from our own view.
Brokeback Mountain is full of this ambiguity, and that's why it has affected so many of us, so much. No matter who we are, we've all felt some of Jack's hurt and Ennis's pain some time in our lives - and if we haven't yet, we know that one day we probably will.
In that great last scene, we are confronted with our most profound fear: that no matter how secure and good life feels right now, one day we may find ourselves totally alone and crippled by regret. You don't think so? Well, just wait until you lose someone you care about and you suddenly realise that no matter what you do, it's just too damn late now to tell that person how much they meant to you.
"Jack, I swear..."
Swear what, Ennis? That you didn't know how much he loved you? But you did. That you didn't mean it when you said, "It's because of you I'm like this." But you did. That if Jack were still alive, you'd stay with him forever and to hell with other people? Friend, it's just too late for that.
To see Ennis in his cruddy little trailer, devoid of hope and certain of only one thing - that the one person who ever loved him with passion is gone forever without knowing he was loved in return - well, it practically broke my heart. Yours too, I guess; that's why you're reading all these reviews. Sure, when it happens to us maybe, like Ennis, we can bury our face in some tangible piece of the past, like an old shirt, but we know eventually even that will lose its potency, and then we'll have nothing left but memories.
There are other movies that have dealt with rejected love and appalling loss, but surely few that have touched peoples' hearts with such power. The irony of it is that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal seemed to be pretty average actors up until now. Who would have thought they had this in them? Same for all the costars. There's only one possibility - whether they realised it or not, they were all lifted and inspired by this story, just as we all were, and this impelled them to reach into their souls and produce the performance of a lifetime. Who knows, maybe none of them will ever be this good again - but then again, they don't really need to be, do they? Producing one masterpiece is enough for any life. Take a bow, all of you who were involved in making this fine, cathartic film. You did well.