We all have a 'Brokeback Mountain'...

Rating: 10/10 (11 February 2017)

In summer 1963, two young cowboys, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall) are hired by Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) to herd his sheep through Wyoming Mountains. Ennis is introverted and laconic, Jack lively and romantic. In the midst of their mission, they discover mutual love somewhere in Brokeback Mountain.
The bond is tacit first, but culminates on a cold night where they have sex, in a violent yet passionate way. The day after, they decide to let the matter rest. What happened in Brokeback stays in Brokeback. Yet they can't fool their feelings. Each one follows his path, gets married, has children, but when they meet again a few years after, the joy is so overwhelming they surrender to an urgent desire to kiss each other, perhaps the most desperately passionate of recent movies' history. Then they decide to go 'fishing' in the setting of their previous isolated passion, marking the start of a two-decade secretive relationship. Brokeback becomes the kind of destination inviting you, for once in a lifetime, to be true to yourself. To a certain degree, we all have a Brokeback Mountain.
It wasn't my intent to introduce this review with the dull cliché about a place being less a geographical location than a 'state of mind' but this time, it's essential to establish from the start what the film is not: a 'gay cowboy movie', it does feature a love story between two cowboys but the focus isn't on their forbidden relationship. Of course, a homosexual romance in the Midwest or in Texas wasn't the most cheerfully welcomed thing in the 60's and 70's, but Ang Lee isn't interested in the "message", this is not a film supposed to open your eyes on homophobia, but just to show how the lives of two persons are profoundly affected by a crucial choice they have made early in their youth: renouncing to their happiness because of social pressure, and affecting in the process other people's lives. The film is full of bad but understandable decisions like life I guess.
Life indeed, that's what earns this film its universal appeal, had it focused on homophobia then the two cowboys would have inspired sympathy but not the right one, as victims, we would have true feelings but not strong enough to transcend the 'gay' context. The merit of the Oscar- winning script, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana was to create a story where the real suffering was actually self-inflicted. It's all in their renouncement, the fact that these two men, after having what they think is an unfortunate roar of passion, decide to go back to 'normal' lives, and resign to lives that weren't theirs. These are average blue-collar unambitious guys, why should they even dream of happiness after all? But they realize they simply condemned themselves to hell because they regularly have a taste of the very happiness they're missing.
Watching the film, I had the feeling I was looking at my own condition, and I thought to myself, anyone who ever renounced a dream to follow the other sheep (I wonder if the imagery was deliberate) until realizing a few years after that he screwed everything, will relate to the story. And reading Roger Ebert's review, I appreciated that he spotted the same thing : "I can imagine someone weeping at this film, identifying with it, because he always wanted to stay in the Marines, or be an artist or a cabinetmaker." Count me in the 'artist' category. Through the story of these two cowboys spending their all lives lying to people they love and to themselves, while movies exhilarate the acquaintances with destiny, this one hits a universally sensitive chord because it's about wasted lives.
Annie Proulx' wrote a short story that could hardly fit in a film's format, and that inspired the screenwriters the idea to expand the romance over the limits of Brokeback. And that's the element that elevated the film, because from the forbidden relationship between Ennis and Heath, we also see how it profoundly affects the lives of their wives, especially Alma (Michelle Williams) who witnesses the passionate kiss and confronts Ennis about his so-called fishing trips where he came back without fishes, many years later, we can feel the pain of betrayal. A similar scene occurs with a waitress played by Linda Cardellini, who genuinely falls in love with Ennis ignoring what he had inside. Ennis and Jack aren't victims, and they don't enjoy hurting people, but the film makes the right choice of embodying the laconic personality of Ennis and the confusion of Jack, so we can feel their unhappiness from very subtle and silent moments.
Indeed, seeing them in their ordinary lives highlight what is truly missing and that's how "Brokeback Mountain" displays an astonishing maturity with a relatively simple plot, there's no message, no political statement, it's all in the unseen and unspoken. Although there are a few heartbreaking moments where you have lines that say it all, the most haunting being "I wish I knew how to quit you" or when Ennis mentions the memory of his father showing them the corpse of a dead gay cowboy (killed in the most atrocious way), we know it's both an explanation for his tacit nature but maybe an omen for a tragic ending. But this is a credit to the screenwriters to have let a magnificent love story unfold and surprise those who expected the 'gay romance'; the film isn't about homosexuality, but a love that happens to be between men.
The script waited for years before being adapted, known as the greatest non-adapted script, as if it waited for the right director. Ang Lee managed to provide some depth and heart in the film rightfully winning an Oscar for his sensitive directing. The talent of Jake Gyllenhall and the late Heath Ledger doing the rest