Huge cultural impact comes from small, quality film.

Rating: 9/10 (11 January 2006)

I worry that with all the buzz and hysteria surrounding Brokeback Mountain, that audiences will go to see it expecting a vast sweeping saga, with epic scope and numerous Oscar-bait scenes like every other movie that has been an Oscar front-runner over recent years.
Brokeback Mountain isn't like that at all. It's a small, intimate and very personal film which starts off quietly and grows subtly and slowly, into a totally engrossing drama of human relationships and tragic loss. The emotional punch it produces is not lessened by the filmmakers' not manipulating your feelings. Instead the film meanders along quietly and then when you're not looking, it socks you right in the gut, rather than eking tears from your eyes.
I've watched so many films recently that use sledgehammer tactics to drive their messages home, or try too hard to wring every conceivable emotion out of my soul, that it's very refreshing to find a film which lets the audience do a lot of the thinking for themselves. You have to watch each scene, you have to listen, and sometimes you have to do your own working out. It's a challenge, but one which pays off big time. You may go home thinking, yeah, okay good movie I suppose, and then find you can't get it out of your head for the next week.
There isn't an area where Brokeback Mountain is weak. The script is taut, the acting is inspired and the photography is gorgeous everywhere. An awful lot is conveyed by silence, and gestures or looks instead of words. These characters don't emote on the surface. They don't babble on  they are taciturn men. And it works really, really well. They become so engrossing that it's difficult to stop thinking about their fate and speculating what might have happened, what a certain scene meant, why a character did so and so.
Don't expect the film to give you all the answers either. Just go along for the ride and revel in the simple beauty of pure human storytelling. And by the end you may have forgotten that Ennis and Jack were gay, all you will remember is the anguish of what might have been.