stark, haunting strength

Rating: 10/10 (22 December 2005)

Some of you may be thinking of avoiding this film because of its same-sex subject matter. That would be a shame, as this is an unusually smart and poignant love story, one that earnestly and candidly asks questions about life's purpose and our duties to each other and ourselves.
Two hard-scrabble young men share the summer of 1963 herding sheep in the American west. One, Jack, is brash, energetic, and talkative, innocently seeking attention and camaraderie. He wants more from life. The other, Ennis, is less confident. In fact, he is stoic to the point of being nonverbal. Ennis has been bred to endure a life filled with silences, tedium and loneliness, without imagining the possibility of more. This will change. Except for their shared work, which is hard and numbing, Jack and Ennis seem to have little in common,
One night, Jack and Ennis's physical horse play turns sexual, maybe out of loneliness, maybe out of boredom. The film remains purposely vague on this point, refusing to know more about this encounter than do its lead characters. Afterwards, Jack and Ennis . . . especially Ennis . . . contend with guilt feelings, but return to each other's bodies with renewed sexual vigor. At summer's end, these otherwise seemingly straight men have become caught up in feelings that transcend physical attraction, feelings which they acknowledge, but are unable to shape, categorize, or really even understand.
Herein lies this film's stark, haunting strength: from start to finish, it does not pretend to understand Jack and Ennis's feelings for each other any more than they do. Instead, it recounts their clandestine and intermittent meetings on Brokeback Mountain with an unflinching eye and a raw soul. Every sensual tool of the cinema ensures that we feel the pleasures and relentless demands of these men's sexual attraction. Meawhile, nuanced and not-so-nuanced elements of dramatic structure show the problems their attraction brings, the damage it does, and the violence it elicits. All the while, the film maintains a strangely languorous pace . . . as if each scene were inevitably flowing from the previous one according to fate's dispassionate cadence.
Brokeback Mountain quietly celebrates the love it reveals, itself a welcome achievement. Still, it does so much more. It contemplates this love. It stands in awe of its power to infuse even the meanest of lives with depth, beauty and meaning, even when . . . or perhaps especially when . . . that meaning proves tragic. The film reaches emotional heights by artfully asking how sexuality, privilege, historical accident, and personal responsibility determine the opportunities we find and the choices we make in life. It achieves epic grandeur by refusing to resolve these questions with easy answers or familiar slogans.
This film is not a happy story, but neither is it completely sad. It is sublimely beautiful and a startlingly significant American film.