It's a powerful film but not much of a love story

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2006)

I am amazed at the extent to which projection and prejudice can completely obscure the true merits and flaws of a film, but never more so than with this film.
Ang Lee is a brilliant director - concise and dispassionate, with a stunning visual style that is never cliché but always involving. The mountain itself is the most compelling character. By turns soft and yielding, then cruel and even violent. Unfortunately, neither Gyllenhaal nor Ledger are anywhere near its ability to convey emotion.
Ledger's junior league "Sling Blade" impersonation has at least some more gravitas than Gyllenhaal's smirky rent boy attitude. The principal job of an actor is to show us their journey, their evolution from the beginning to the end of the film based on the events that happen to them and their response to those events. Emotionally, these guys start at Point A and end at Point A. Now could that theoretically be a valid choice for an actor? Possibly - if you're playing a sociopath or other severely emotionally disconnected character. Even in that case, however, there would have to be subtle changes, a deterioration at least. These guys show no growth of any kind, even though they're supposed to age 20 years (in that way, of course, they are totally unbelievable as well - they appear to start in their mid-20s and end there as well).
I understand the importance of casting hotties d'annee for commercial reasons (or d'annee dernier in Ledger's case). I also realize it is much easier for women and gay men to project their own fantasies onto attractive young men and I have no objection to that. Frankly, these are very tough roles and I can't really think of any other actors of this age that could necessarily pull it off. I'm sure they exist, but they may not fit the cutie-pie mold otherwise needed for the brain-dead high school romances, T-and-A fests and cheesy horror films that constitute most of what is available for young actors (and the majority of both of these actors' resumes). I admire them for wanting to stretch as actors, but I think they are both completely out of their depth here.
The girls are better. Michelle Williams is achingly believable as the betrayed young wife, while Anne Hathaway gives a stunningly reserved portrayal as the Texas Rodeo Queen who never really dares to know until it is too late. The movie would have been better had it devoted more of its story telling to these two characters.
Frankly, the story is weak. It feels like a short story artificially elongated for the movie form. It's hard to buy the resonance that one summer could have had on the lives of these men considering what a comparatively small part of the movie it comprises.
The bottom line is: when the hell did they fall in love? On Brokeback? They were kids surrendering to lust. Violently. And just barely. They spent their lives getting together for disconnected sexual romps that would have none of the sustenance of real love. Maybe in the hands of better actors this could have been conveyed. It wasn't. The only people Ledger lets us see Ennis love are his daughters.
And Jack Twist's character was even harder to understand. He had to go to Mexico to get laid? In 1978? What about Dallas or Houston? Both of those cities would have had thriving gay ghettos by the mid-70s. And then, without explanation, he replaced Ennis with another guy. A real actor might have made us understand this seemingly bizarre behavior but it just left me cold and confused.
Gyllenhaal's character seemed to be very comfortable with his sexuality from the first time we see him, eyeing Ennis in the rear view as he shaves. This makes no sense at all, especially considering how apparently naive (even for the time) he was otherwise. This also gave him nowhere to go with the character as life would have made him wiser and presumably more cynical. Floundering around in Mexico 25 years later, however, he didn't seem to have become any wiser - and he was already plenty cynical to begin with!
"Far From Heaven," which is far from a perfect film, already covered this topic and managed to make a hell of a lot more sense doing it. Wisely, it focused on the wife (the brilliant Julianne Moore) and the burden she had to deal with. But Dennis Quaid (no one's idea of a great actor) managed to be very convincing as a man facing his sexuality in a repressive time and place (nearly a decade before Ennis and Jack, by the way).
"Brokeback Mountain" is a beautiful film and compelling despite its many flaws. Good try Mr. Ledger - I expect to see good things from you in the future. I'm afraid its back to Donnie Darko II with you, Mr. Gyllenhaal until you get over yourself.
And to all the people - gay, straight or whatever - who use this movie to gauge either one's homophobia or homosexuality, you all need to get over yourselves as well. You can like it, you can hate it or you can just not see it and it doesn't say anything more about you than this is a film you either choose or choose not to see, like or don't like. It's not for everyone but certainly is for some. Let's just relax, people. It's just a movie - neither the best nor the worst. Homophobia is an ugly reality but it has no place in the debate of a film's merits - either pro or con.