Love: O Mysterious, Seductive Treachery

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2006)

Love is mysterious. It seduces us into places where we may not have ever gone, but for a love which is mysterious, wonderful and true.
Yes.
I have seen Brokeback Mountain.
In fact it has been nearly 6 hours since I walked out of the theater and it has taken almost everything I have to summon any words to explain how this film has taken hold of me. How it has seduced my heart and my mind.
This film is universal. And perhaps it is not universal.
Enough cannot be said for HEATH LEDGER or JAKE GYLLENHAAL. They practically carried an entire film with an artistry that has propelled them both into a realm of deservedly elevated recognition.
The specific events of this film concern themselves with two men who fall in love. It happens to take place on a certain glorious mountain while they work as cowboys. (Or in this case, sheep herders.)
Some have said that it is a "gay cowboy movie". Yet, it is more than that and also on the contrary it is only that.
The events might be transferred to any combination of lovers who cannot reveal their truths. Yet, it concerns only the results of trying to live the "love that dare not speak its name." I won't try to appease either side. This film will envelope you just the same no matter your vantage point.
Anyway you view this film, the end result is that love which does not follow the path set by supposedly mainstream traditions is sometimes destined to implode from its rejection by society. That is to say that the love itself is not destroyed by the lovers but by the pressure which is exerted against those lovers.
It destroys the lovers from the outside inwardly.
Yet, in some miraculous instances, the love survives. That society has changed its attitudes some but, just a little in the ensuing historical 40 years since the storyline of this film begins is only a side issue. And yet, an important factor.
The world changes slowly. Descendents of the confederacy still cling to what happened 141 years ago, Jews cling to what happened 60 plus years ago, Cubans cling to what happened to 47 years ago and Vietnam veterans will cling for at least the period of their lifetimes.
Love like war is, to borrow a song title, a battlefield of beliefs, fears and unrealized hopes. But it is more than that. It is something that we cannot predict, or plan or contemplate until it hits us.
We never know from where it is about to emerge and we never know where it is about to transport us.
Jack and Ennis encountered this kind of dilemma. But they could not share it with the world and had trouble enough sharing it with themselves.
What ANG LEE has done is to make an epic love story into an intimate tale. Sounds simple enough until one realizes that the epic nature of the film is within the hearts and minds of the two men. This expansion of the Annie Proulx short story by McMurty and Ossana brings us inside of the men's minds without necessary writing down every word for them to say.
They rely on that almost extinct sense of art called "subtlety" to convey this. Another feat, not so small.
That class of sensibility begins and ends the film. When Ennis has an uncontrollable torrent of feelings bursting out of him at the end and could have possibly said a multitude of banal statements, he only blurts out three words. These three words will stay with me for a very long time.
Not only is there credit to the writers for the eloquent simplicity of that ending, due credit must deservedly go to the speaker, HEATH LEDGER. These are the three words that burst my floodgates and left me immobile, physically and emotionally overwrought until this moment. The words were not vulgar, nor offensive, sentimental or cliché. They were art.
The answer to how many films have been able to do all of this in the past, is enough to explain how this movie has reached its worldwide acclaim. It is a distinction for its directors, writers, actors, composer and crews to have worked and brought us this timeless, timely tale of love.
Recommended Without Reservation.