Love Doesn't Always Save Us

Rating: 10/10 (8 April 2006)

Ang Lee has fashioned a wonderful American fugue from a story by Annie Proulx. Set against the landscape of the stark American West, Brokeback Mountain peers into the hearts of hardscrabble folks caught up in a seething gay love over a 20 year period. Their lives are as stark as the windblown town streets.
Two young cowboys come together by chance for a summer job in the mountains watching over sheep. It's boring work, uncomfortable, silent, and in the intense loneliness of their separate lives they one freezing night come together in a tent. The act shocks them both as they struggle with their feelings and what to do.
Ennis (Heath Ledger) is the plier-jawed loner who can never connect with anything. He's more surprised by what has happened. Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) seems more ready to accept what he has probably known about himself. But neither man knows what to do. They continue their "love" through the summer until the flinty boss (Randy Quaid) catches a glimpse of their shirtless romp. As summer closes, they go their separate ways not knowing anything else to do.
Years go by. Ennis marries a dumpy little woman (Michelle Williams) and has has kids. He clings to his nomadic lifestyle. Jack drifts into rodeo and eventually marries also. But the course of their lives is set when Jack sends a postcard and says he's coming through town. Ennis can hardly contain the excitement he has for so long squashed within himself.
Their "fishing trip" sets the tone for the next 15 years or so as the two men come together when they can because they cannot deny their love for each other. Jack talks about getting a ranch together, but Ennis knows the hard facts of an openly gay life.
Ennis seems able to live in this small life with wife and kids and seeing Jack now and then, but Jack seems to wander into occasional gay trysts, more unsatisfied with his normal life. The women never really seem to notice much.
The years go by. The men fight and love; they can't give each other up but they can't face the alternative of living together. Fate finally ends their relationship when Ennis gets a postcard returned with "deceased" stamped on it by the post office.
Ledger is amazing as the uptight Ennis, a man with a huge capacity for love but a man who just can't ever admit his homosexual leanings. Gyllenhaal is a wonder as the softer Jack who tries so hard to do what he thinks the world expects. Both men are so driven by their Western codes of what others will think that they sacrifice their "true" loves and live shallow lives on the edges of reality.
The film strikes the perfect balance between showing too much and leaving much for the viewer to imagine. So we're left with the image of Ennis cringing as he asks if other people can tell. He wonders if when someone looks at him oddly if they know. His guilt for his man love renders him even more reticent than his usual nature. Jack moves into dangerous territory as he seeks out what Ennis won't give him.
Anne Hathaway is good as Jack's wife. Roberta Maxwell is striking in her small role as Jack's mother. Quaid and Williams are also good.
But Gyllenhaal and Ledger are front and center here and amazingly avoid all gay stereotypes. Their characters don't change after they realize their gay tendencies. They are who they are. This is a sad and very beautiful film.