Elegant; Beautiful; Important; Did Not Move Me

Rating: 7/10 (8 January 2006)

I expected a lot from "Brokeback Mountain." Pre-release buzz has been overwhelming, and overwhelmingly positive. Ang Lee is a favorite.
"Brokeback Mountain" is a beautiful, elegant, important movie. The performances are first rate. Randy Quaid, Roberta Maxwell, and Grahm Beckel are particularly brilliant in small roles. "Brokeback Mountain," as a whole, just didn't move me.
I know that professional and amateur reviewers have emphasized how moving and "haunting" this film is. I know there are often audible sobs in theaters.
I thought it was a beautiful, intelligent, very, very classy movie.
But it didn't move me. I've seen a lot of stupider, less beautiful, less classy movies that reduced me to tears.
My specific problem was: why are these two people so much in love? We've all had attractions like that. You're in your twenties, you're in the middle of nowhere, the person next to you becomes the be all and end all of existence ... but, still to be hankering after that person twenty years later, with no one else taking their place? That hasn't happened to me, or, afaik, to anyone I know.
The one moment of high emotion for me in the movie was when Jack's mom shows a kindness to Ennis that involves a piece of clothing ...those who've seen the movie know what i'm talking about.
But the love between Ennis and Jack is the fulcrum of the movie. If that doesn't convince and compel the viewer, you're left looking at two hours plus of sheep, mountains, and horses.
It's not Gyllenhaal's or Ledger's fault. They are both beyond reproach. I just wish director Ang Lee or scriptwriter Larry McMurtry had created some scenes that would communicate more clearly, and more devastatingly, the depth and complexity of this human bond.
I can think of numerous movies that depicted bonds between males that convinced me more thoroughly than "Brokeback Mountain" did that the two males on screen, if separated, would be deeply wounded by that separation.
Some, like "Bent," depicted gay male couples; many, from the Robert Redford-Paul Newman and Walter Mathau-Jack Lemon movies, to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in "Good Will Hunting" and Jay and Silent Bob in their eponymous film -- depict straight male couples.
I experienced intellectual admiration for the movie. Its well-conveyed central irony is that the cinematic wide-open spaces of the American West, iconic as the ultimate site of human freedom, becomes little more than an emotional cage for the main characters.