Haunting --even after third viewing

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2005)

You read the hundreds of postings here and think, "Can all this praise be real and deserving?" I am here to tell you, uncatagorically, "YES!!!". After seeing the film one time in Palm Springs, I remember walking to my car haunted by Ennis and Jack's tragic love story. Tears clouding my eyes for hours after. No other movie has done that so deeply to me. You truly are "hit in the gut". The theater erupted in applause for the movie after the ending. It was as if the audience were trying to wrap its arms around the movie and offer a collective shoulder on which to cry. The completely devastating last 15 minutes or so of the film are some of the most heart-wrenching fictional moments ever captured on film in my opinion. If you are not moved to tears, or don't have a lump in your throat, you'd better get to the hospital to check if you have a pulse! After taking two of my friends to see Brokeback, one of them sort of gasped "What?!" at the end..."No that can't be the ending...they can't leave us like that". For that reason she said she didn't like the movie. I received an email from this friend a few days ago and she said she just couldn't stop thinking of the haunting images, and she definitely believes, now, that the film had a much deeper effect on her than she originally imagined. Heath Ledger, you deserve the Best Actor Oscar this year my friend--if only for the bravery and risk you took to put your skill to work on this amazing character! Forget comparisons to Marlon and to James Dean...you surpass them hundreds of times over. And Jake Gyllenhaal amazes me. I really didn't catch all the brilliance he lends to his portrayal until I saw the movie for the third time. He's incredible in his natural, raw, and reserved acting. The other actors are equally brilliant. It's as if everyone involved in the movie knew and understood the universal pain their story addressed. And in telling the story, they hold a mirror up to society and ask us all to look in and understand ourselves the fact that WE are Ennis and Jack, and that it's not their story we have watched...it's our own. To paraphrase a line in the movie, "Brokeback Mountain got me good".