Simply sublime

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2005)

I'm an avid consumer of cinema, but this is the first time I've been moved to offer a few words to this website.
'Brokeback Mountain' is a sublime production - in my view, the finest film since Kieslowski's 'Three Colours: Red'  and one I suspect I'll revisit many times yet. The 26-year-old Heath Ledger offers a performance almost too good to be possible: he's mastered every shift of character with delicacy and conviction; his screen presence is entrancing. Jake Gyllenhaal is only just short of matching Ledger's brilliance, achieving a palpable despair in every challenge his character faces. The script is pared down to the essentials  perhaps a rarity amongst American films - but is so packed with subtleties that I suspect only three or more viewings will reveal them all. Ang Lee couldn't have realised this material any better, capturing with perfect balance the silences and the words, the darkness and the light, the comedy and the tragedy. The lilting motifs of the music represent the quintessence of film scoring; and the characters' environment is exquisitely recorded by the camera.
But aside from these technical considerations, this story is so deeply touching, and so beautifully rendered, that I'm still haunted by its images and moods. Could the challenge of love (between any two persons) be better presented on screen? So tender is the bond between these characters; so confusing are the feelings this bond generates; and so lonely is the experience that results from these characters' decisions  that I think not.
In a world saturated with superlatives, I struggle to express my reaction to this film adequately. Perhaps I should say no more than I want this film to win every award it can, and I want the whole world to see it.