One Of The Greatest American Movies Of The Past Quarter Century

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2006)

From the pages of Annie Proulx's poignant, sparingly written short story screen writers Larry McMurtry and Diane Ossana have woven an epic love story for the screen and with director Ang Lee guiding a perfect cast have created in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN a motion picture that ranks with the great classics of the past. So much has already been written and discussed regarding this prematurely famous film that it seems superfluous at this point to add another comment. But what I find amazing about this film is its dichotomy: on the one hand there is all the current brouhaha concerning the screenplay's "controversial" subject matter. At the same time here is a movie that dutifully follows the pattern of good, old fashioned Hollywood -style film-making. The 20 year saga of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, their passionate love thwarted by convention and bigotry is given the full throttle treatment by Ang Lee who dares to take the time to tell this story at a leisurely pace. The film's opening section is deliberately paced but never boring. And as we come to know the characters of Ennis and Jack and their time on Brokeback Mountain, the rest of the story becomes an emotional journey for the audience as well. Once off the mountain, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN gains momentum. If the film's longer second half veers into soap opera, as some critics have charged, then it is soap opera of the most riveting and utterly believable sort.
Mere words cannot do justice to the performance Heath Ledger gives in this film. His Ennis is a man whose laconic nature barely hides the anger and passion just underneath the surface. I can't recall another performance where such inchoate feelings of love and loss have been so brilliantly rendered. The final minutes of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN are as heartrending as any you will see on the screen. Jake Gyllenhaal compliments Ledger's performance beautifully. His Jack is all feeling and frustration, a sweet-tempered man whose dream of sharing a life with Ennis is seemingly quashed at every turn.
Technically labeled by some as a western and/or cowboy movie due to its setting, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is really a universal story. However, time (the early 1960s through the early 80s) and place are evoked so completely that one feels immersed in those Wyoming mountain pastures (actually filmed in Alberta ,Canada for the early scenes). As with every other aspect of this film, the cinematography is stunning. Clear mountain lakes mirror majestic skies and pines; a lone campfire, an orange dot on a mountainside, is nearly swallowed in the immense darkness of night; sheepherders guide their lambs, ewes, dogs and mules through vast mountain terrain, one particular shot photographed from what seems like a perch on the moon; small western towns; garish, neon-lit Country Western bars; a nighttime Fourth of July celebration and weathered ranch homes, barns and trailers are registered just as beautifully. This is a movie where grace and grit go hand in glove. Rodrigo Prieto's camera work is flawless.
Ang Lee's achievement cannot be underestimated. He has pulled off an incredible hat trick in making a film that all audiences can relate to. No doubt there are many people who will resist going to see this film, but it will be their loss. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is an ineffably sad tale : an elegy for dreams never achieved and roads not taken. It is an American masterpiece.