excellent portrayal of love

Rating: 9/10 (23 May 2008)

Heath Ledger (Monster's Ball) stars as Ennis Del Mar, a man sent to work on Brokeback Mountain alongside Jake Gyllenhaal's (Donnie Darko) character Jack Twist. As work takes its toll, the two fall in love and encounter many challenges as time moves on.
Based on Annie Proulx's novel, this Oscar winning romantic drama brings a sensitive ideology to viewers in a heart warming tale about two cowboys.
The slow moving plot took a while to get into at the beginning but as we see more of the character's personalities does the film start to become intriguing viewing. The plot is excellent in focusing strongly upon the character's personalities and the emotions each go through as they slowly start to bond. His ideology will keep you hooked as it follows many relationship conventions but is told in such a way that it is sad and also portrays realism, which many romantic films do, but in a soppy way. This drama differs by being less comical and more serious in its nature and you can really feel for the two characters.
This film, I believe, wouldn't have been as great if Ledger and Gyllenhaal not stared in it, they were simply astonishing in their roles as the two cowboys. Both receiving Oscar nominations, the two are brilliant in conforming to their characters, and perfect the nature of their sexuality even more so. Both with their own personal backgrounds we can get an understanding of what they are like and where they have been as the film progresses.
Ang Lee's (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) direction is excellent. I personally love films which have scenes of around 5 seconds long, just beautiful in portraying the character in everyday life, perfect realism which needs to be encoded more into modern day films. Lee captures the intensity of the characters brilliantly with close shots encoded to portray their emotions and one of the scenes towards the end is really sentimental and couldn't have been directed much better.
Brokeback Mountain is a wonderful setting, quite and peaceful in which this story about two people who fall in love could not have been better placed.