Love is a force of nature: unpredictable and ungovernable

Rating: 10/10 (7 April 2010)

1963. Ennis Del Mar, a ranch-hand and Jack Twist a rodeo cowboy in search for a better work and money decide to work as sheepherders in Brokeback Mountain (located in Wyoming), what they ignore is that this job is about to change their lives forever. This is the base of award-winning short story written by Annie Proulx Brokeback Mountain, adapted to the big screen in 2005 by Larry McMurtry and Dianna Ossana and directed by Oscar winning director Ang Lee.
Instead of focusing on the "gay" angle, Proulx's story and McMurtry & Ossana's masterful screenplay narrate the emotional journey of two people who love each other, but are unable to stay together due to fear of losing everything (even their lives) if they're ever discovered (avoiding morbid and gratuitous situations/scenes that could have spoiled what the movie's trying to say). Ennis is a quiet, distant man who cannot express his feelings as openly as he'd like to. Jack, on the other hand is a cheerful, expressive guy and needs to feel affection and being cherished by someone. Even if their tempers are completely different, what Jack and Ennis share will keep them going throughout the years in spite of knowing they might not end up together at all.
Is the acting, nevertheless what gives this movie a very special dimension, especially considering the main characters are young and they have to be played by very talented actors. Ang Lee knows this and trust entirely in the cast and he wasn't mistaken: Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams as the young wives of the main characters provide an unanticipated humanity to roles that could have been simple adornments to the story. Jake Gyllenhaal proves once again his extraordinary potential as Jack Twist, the lovesick, charismatic man who wants to share the rest of his life with Ennis in a place where they can't hide their love. And the late Heath Ledger, in a performance that's about to become legendary along with his Joker as Ennis: a man whose silence seems to condemn him to loneliness, with a prodigious body language Ledger echoes the most iconic Bergmanian characters.
Brokeback Mountain is a movie about love, but it is also about showing how fear is the greatest obstacle when it comes to love someone.