Heartbreaking romance, one for the ages

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2006)

This beautiful, difficult film depicts the love between two tender-hearted, emotionally deprived, educationally limited, fearful and bottled-up men who quite accidentally find each other -- and in each other, the love and joy of their lives -- during a hardscrabble teenaged summer herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain, WY.
Since this is the rural American heartland, ca. 1963, neither of them even imagines the possibility of living a different life from what they've always known; they experience their first encounter as a one-time aberration, only to find out, much too late, that their deep joy and delight in each other's presence really is love, and they should never have married their unhappy wives just because marriage after a certain age was expected.
The tragic content of the film resonates with the real-life murder, not too long ago, of a young gay man in Wyoming (Matthew Shephard), and this resonance enhances the power of the film.
Best moments: Ennis' farewell to Jack's mother, with Ennis' old shirt in the brown paper bag; Ennis & Jack on Brokeback Mountain, lying side by side under the vast starlit sky -- Ennis says: "I'm just sayin' a little prayer of thanks." Jack asks "For what?" and Ennis replies, with a complicated smile, "For you forgettin' that damn harmonica, for the peace and quiet."