Bodacious Cowboys

Rating: 7/10 (15 April 2006)

A fine example of compositional film-making. Ang sets this up from the get-go by framing the world of shepherding with the titular mountain as the background, a 'current' of activity in the middle, i.e., the sheep or the river current itself, and the passionate bits right up close in the foreground.
This is mirrored in the story composition; the central relationship depends on those infrequent 'high altitude' trysts appearing way up close and tightly framed; the lives of married men and their families carry the middle current; the spectral backdrop is 'homophobia' (if such a charitably restrained word can be used to describe the disgusting inhumanity displayed in the Matthew Shepard murder, to which this plainly alludes -- it looms at least as large as the mountain).
Kudos to Ang for getting the stance right -- no treatises on the minutiae of a cowboy's existence.
And he got the musical accompaniment right...repeatedly iterating that minor-key waltz to punctuate the visual narrative and then move us forward.