Amazing and heartfelt...a must see

Rating: 10/10 (7 February 2006)

Well, I went to see this film in the UK about two weeks ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I have now seen it 6 times! The film is an absolute masterpiece. It restores your faith in the quality of films being produced. Ang Lee is the master in subtlety and imagery, both he uses with enormous success in Brokeback Mountain.
The actors are both fantastic. Heath Ledger as the stoic and repressed Ennis Delmar. Jake Gyllenhaal as the hopeless romantic Jack Twist. All through the film I found myself feeling the same emotions they were showing me, that is how amazing they are. They were able to say so much without saying a word through gestures, body language and eye contact. They were breathtaking.
It is beautifully shot with an amazing score that really tugs at your heart strings.
It is so much more than the "gay cowboy movie" which is a horrible title pinned on it by the media. It is a love story, very much along the same lines as Romeo and Juliet; two people in love who can't be together, who have a tragic ending. And it really is that, TRAGIC. The only reason the two can't be together is because society in 1960's American West was/is extremely homophobic. This makes you think about just how much people suffer at the hands of such ideas.
This film has received a lot of negative press regarding the sexual content within it. Too me, this is hypocrisy. You see much more graphic sex scenes in love stories about two straight people in love, so why all the fuss? Even banning the film has occurred in some areas of the USA, because they say that "middle America doesn't want to see it". Well, seeing as it has grossed more than any other Oscar Contender, I think you could say that the cinemas have completely under-estimated Middle American people!
I think this film is so popular because it makes you start to look at your own lives, the loves you have had, the regrets you have, the mistakes you have made.
I really can't stress enough what an amazingly beautiful masterpiece of cinema this is.
GO AND SEE IT