And now all we got is Brokeback Mountain.

Rating: 9/10 (7 September 2016)

The two first set eyes on each other silently. It is six minutes, after their initially job briefing, before they finally exchange a few clipped pleasantries and go on their way. The dialogue in Brokeback Mountain is only ever used as a last resort, when gesturing and actions can take you no further. It is little more than half-grunts, words masked by their drawls and layers of masculinity that prevent them from saying how they feel. Lee is more than competent visually, so he knows other ways of expressing this. The first sex scene is in almost complete darkness as they fumble around and rip at each other's clothes - he expects the viewer to orientate via the sounds. And what are they? Not tender words, or even moans, but guttural, deep-bodied grunts. It is less a less scene and more a wrestling match, in the way they grapple and push and shove. And of course there is that tremendous shallow focus shot of a nude Ennis in the background and Jack in the foreground. It hovers for longer than necessary, holding and holding until we are all but pleading for him to turn and look. There is repression that trembles in the frame itself, and his resolve is steadfast, at least for the moment.
There is a great secondary cast surrounding them that also push and pull. Lee knows their importance. In a lesser film the forbidden love would be framed as some fervid romantic fantasy. The wives would be bitchy and the kids a nightmare, and they would yearn so much more for their escape into paradise. But this understands that Alma is a character too, and that she suffers in her own way. She is as similarly unequipped as her husband to deal with such things, and so briefly she is also in that state of continuous pain. Lee shows the same situation with Lureen, and through the edit allows for clever contrast. The last thing Jack does before leaving for his 'fishing trip' is to kiss her on the lips, and Alma (and the audience) expects the same from her husband. But Ennis is simply reaching for his bag, and the moment is like a gut-punch for both us and Williams. Ah, but she has learned the same ways of internalisation, and silently voices her pain. The same vicious comparison is seen during Thanksgiving - as one man is being displaced as the man of the house, the other makes his stand. Their respective tone and body language (Ledger is all but slumped and defeated) speak volumes of how they approach the sensitive issue of the visibility of their sexuality.
The film covers a period of twenty years, and Lee never feels the need for any hefty title cards, but illustrates the passing of time in smaller details. Ennis flips Alma over to mimic Jack, and the groaning bed-springs give way to the match cut to the breaking rodeo gate miles away. The delicate twangs of the guitar submit to trip after trip, with inhibitions slowly papering themselves over and then cracking passionately, and sometimes, violently. A shabby cloth propped up by sticks eventually becomes something more of a shelter, but meanwhile Ennis' home and life slowly closes in on him. Who was it that Alma Junior was dating again?
Brokeback Mountain is all about how Ennis is uncomfortable in his own skin because of a sight thrust into his eyes by his father at a young age, and how this tears him up inside. But in the process it is also about destroying the discomfort of the screen. They start as prototypical western males, thumbs tucked into belt loops, their skin coarse, their mouths sewn shut. The awareness not only exists on our level (both Gyllenhall and Ledger were young but established) but within their world, and each muscle of their body is fighting that pre-programmed urge that constantly reinforces itself through the culture and the people. This culminates in the most powerful scene of the film, when Ennis returns to Jack's parents and offers to scatter his ashes atop Brokeback Mountain. Every person in the room knows what he is here for, and what his former relationship to Jack was. John Twist speaks carefully. He twists the knife, goading Ennis through how cruelly he refers to his deceased son, and how he cannot show any emotion or mourn like they are allowed to. And Ledger cannot show that it hurts him, although we can see the pain etched in his face. Lee has made gay films in the past, but this most reminds me of Wong Kar- Wai's Happy Together, about another gay couple that were trapped in the ever-vicious cycle of love and hate. But that was more intimate, lusher in both setting and tone. Ennis Del Mar does not have the same luxury.