A jewel of a film.

Rating: 10/10 (9 July 2006)

I love this movie. Really love it. Haunting score, stunning cinematography, gripping performances, timeless tale--everything. People quibble about non-essentials. I'm female, middle-aged, hetero, and I defy you to tell me that the average straight guy is any more expressive than Ennis or any less needy than Jack. Or the average gal, either, straight or gay. Deeper than their sex, their sexuality, their religious, educational, economic or historic backgrounds, Jack and Ennis are two human beings living in the world as they find it--beautiful and indifferent at best, and as they find themselves--beautiful and flawed at best. Desire is desire. The desire for warmth, for connection, for any echo at all in the vastness of time and space, is shared by every human being ever to have lived. For me, the issue is not how repressed or thwarted Ennis and Jack are, but how persistently they turn toward the light, despite all impediment. Brokeback Mountain lyrically retells a story thousands of years old: loss and grief are unavoidable; love is where you find it.