Breakheart, rather ...

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2005)

First of all, I planned to see "Good Night and Good Luck" but arrived too late. Then, one of the previews was for Wright's new "Pride and Prejudice", which seems to confuse Austen's subdued conversation piece with "Wuthering Heights", as far as melodrama is concerned (I may be unfair, though). And after this, "Brokeback Mountain" took me quite by surprise. It is so slow moving that I would undoubtedly have skipped passages if I had seen it on DVD. Luckily, I did not. Based on a David Hare-like and highly romantic idea that we can search all our lives for that moment of happiness that eluded us at the crucial crossroads of our lives, "Brokeback Mountain" tells the love story of two guys - cowboys, at that - through twenty years of glimpses. True to the character of the unusually tight-lipped Ennis (Ledger), only the bare essentials are told, tip-of-the-iceberg Hemmingway-style, crass realism, no frills whatsoever, and for that very reason, I believe, the tragic undertow of the story hits all the harder when it finally dawns on us. When thinking of the film afterwards (and it's one of those films where that cannot be helped) you find that you know all you need to know about the characters, in spite of the seemingly scant info. There are little hints that both the main characters have had loving, caring mothers and horrid fathers, for instance, and they are both marked, in each their own way, by a deeply moving innocence, so as to constitute a community of saints, with Brokeback Mountain as another Eden.
Ang Lee, Heath Ledger (extremely touching, as he was in "Monster's Ball") and Gyllenhaal are geniuses, and so is MacMurtry, I presume - he is only one of the two scriptwriters, but the sentiment of "Brokeback" matches his "Lonesome Dove" and "Dead Man's Walk" accurately. Moreover, I can't recall seeing another film that so successfully adds 20 years to its main characters. Gyllenhaal is helped by a paunch and a mustache, but Ledger seems to do it all by acting. A rare talent. I hope some Oscars will make the trip up Brokeback Mountain.
PS! I HAVE TO RE-EDIT my review (which I will now do) - I have JUST found out that Larry McMurtry wrote the screenplay for "The Last Picture Show" - I didn't know before now, but I swear that I had that 1971 film in my mind when, and after, seeing "Brokeback". I was just about to add that title in the above after mentioning the two McMurtry series, scout's honour, but then I thought it would be strangely confusing to do so just because I sensed some similarity. But beshrew my apprehensions! "Last Picture Show" is another modern-day western, sad and hopeless like nothing else - it choked me up back then and continued to haunt me for years. I am now inclined to send one more bucket of credit McMurtry's way.