Not Exactly Butch and Sundance...

Rating: Null/10 (6 March 2009)

Speaking as a straight man with a tolerance but also an aversion towards overt homosexuality which others might find shameful (but which is as much a product of my genetic make-up as others' sexual orientation is a result of theirs) I've got to say a film like this isn't one that I would queue to watch, but as a movie fan, I felt compelled to give it a go in view of the praise that was heaped upon it when it was first released.
The film looks terrific, and I'm a patient man so the slow pace was no problem for me, but I felt the film failed in its attempt to provide a sympathetic portrayal of the two men forced to live a lie because of their love for one another. For a start the film seems to dismiss the fact that the lie they live also ruins the lives of those who love them: the wives who initially love them, the children whose homes are blighted. These people are portrayed as the chains that drag our duo down and whom they abandon whenever they can. The time Jack and Ennis spend together is all peaceful blue skies and green mountains, their time apart sleazy bars and tractor showrooms and, as I watched, it all started to seem a little too simplistic and by the numbers. The guilt is there, especially in Heath Ledger's Ennis Del Mar, but more often than not it is portrayed as resentment or anger towards his long-suffering wife  who, it has to be said, unaccountably allows the secret to remain just that long after she has stumbled upon the men's subterfuge.
Heath Ledger outshines Gyllenhal in the acting stakes, communicating the inner torment of his character in often monosyllabic snatches of dialogue as he struggles with a truth about himself we are to assume he had never suspected existed before meeting Jack. His performance here is as understated as his Joker was deliberately over-the-top, and it's a mark of the man's ability that he manages to pull both performances off so well.
The sex and intimacy scenes will probably prove distasteful to most straight men, but they are a necessary part of the film, and are treated neither gratuitously nor exploitatively. Having said that, it is only after Jack's death and in the portrayal of Ennis's quiet grief that I felt that any kind of chemistry had existed between the two men.