Hide in plain sight...

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2005)

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is the "gay cowboy movie." Well, it is and it isn't.
For one thing the two protagonists meet while herding sheep, not cattle; but they could just as easily be construction workers, truck drivers, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers or any regular joes who work for a living and are burdened by social expectations, responsibilities and the entire mythos of what it is supposed to take to be a man. As such, what it means to be gay in our still evolving world is absolutely central to what the film is all about, yet totally irrelevant. Gay or straight, the isolation and silent desperation that tortures the two young men in this film are feelings that are more common in males then we usually suspect or would ever like to admit.
But homosexuality, especially being gay in rural or working class worlds, intensifies and deepens the burdens. BROKEBACK is about the things men don't talk about -- and not just what two men might do when alone, in the dark and in the throes of passion. BROKEBACK is about fear and pain and vulnerability and loneliness -- all the things that men are told they must swallow and deny if they are to earn the right to be men. The film is a courageous landmark in the depiction of homosexuality in drama, yet it is also a brave and rare examination of what it is to be a man, any man.
It is the story of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal), two wranglers for hire. During a stint minding sheep in the Wyoming highlands -- on Brokeback Mountain in 1963 -- they each discover that the other is not just his one true love, but also his one true friend. They are two lost souls who find each other literally in the middle of nowhere. They bond with an intensity that is rare in friendships and probably just as rare in marriages. They find they can share, not just their passion, but their dreams and their loneliness. The irony is they only feel comfortable and safe embracing their all consuming love out in the open, in the wide open spaces and isolated privacy of God's country. The two can be as one, but only if they remain part of nature, far removed from the rest of the world.
But that other world exists and demands that they deny their love by also denying their friendship. Separated by states and states of mind, over the next twenty years they build separate lives and separate families, Ennis in Wyoming and Jack in Texas. But they can't stay apart and they don't do a very good job of hiding their passion. Torn between doing the right thing for their wives and children and doing right by each other, they compromise everyone and everything, including their love.
Sparsely written by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana from E. Annie Proulx's crusty short story and poetically directed by Ang Lee, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a beautiful blend of the imagery and mythos of the American western with the flavor of European drama. It is acted without pretense by Ledger and Gyllenhaal who capture with understated eloquence the rowdy passion and the frightened tenderness of their characters.
As a "gay" film, BROKEBACK is a stunning breath of fresh air. Ennis and Jack are not sexual predators or serial killers, they're not preening and prancing promiscuous little disco boys on the make or effete golden boys and they're not puppydog best friends designed to make the liberal main character feel good about herself. They are just average, non-glamorous working class guys who just want the same things out of life as any straight guy: acceptance, family, love. Their sexuality isn't treated as a tragedy or a joke, but as a fact of life. Ennis and Jack are typical working class men, not tiresomely stereotypical gay men.
As honest as BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is in dealing with homosexuality, it is just as intent on offering a realistic picture of masculinity. The image of men -- American males in particular -- has been progressively denigrated in our society; men are demonized as abusers and wife beaters by the feminists and trivialized into ugly, violent, macho jokes by our Quentin Tarantino influenced media. The film was greeted with worries that straight men would not be able to relate to a gay love story, but the sympathetic vision of masculinity it proffers transcends questions of orientation.
Few films do a better job of illustrating the buried passions of the average man. Replace the gay narrative with feelings of unrequited passion to travel or create or succeed or just to escape, and much of what BROKEBACK deals with is universal. Ennis and Jack don't have to be gay for the story to work -- no more than Butch and Sundance or even Thelma and Louise -- but the passion and eroticism of their love, stated clearly and without innuendo, somehow make the other themes more pure and profound. They are social outlaws of victimless crimes.
The film deserves a place among the ranks of the best of the traditional westerns. It offers an extension of the gay subtext found in such film as RED RIVER, THE OUTLAW and BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, but it also embraces the camaraderie between men and the communion with nature that is at the heart of the entire cowboy mythology. The film recognizes parallels between the solitary lives that often are part of being a cowboy or being gay, lives often lived just outside mainstream society. It is not a question of lifestyles, but about lives lived by different sets of rules.