Haunting and Beautiful and Disturbing

Rating: 10/10 (13 February 2006)

Despite the stellar performances and the many levels of beauty in the movie, I left the theater with the vague feeling of disappointment, but I couldn't put my finger on just what it was that left me feeling that way. I thought about it all night, and actually had a bit of trouble sleeping.
By morning, it finally hit me: it wasn't the movie at all that disappointed me. It was the utter unfairness and the very real despair that the characters lived with throughout the twenty years that the film spanned that haunted me.
If a single frame of the movie had been different, it would be a travesty. It stayed with me because it did its job; it told an unforgettable story of a love that was doomed from the beginning and dared to be beautiful despite that.
Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) accepts that things are the way they are, and nothing they do can change that. He almost convinces himself that he's content with the small snatches of happiness he and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) can share together. Jack, though, never gives up on the unrealistic and almost childlike hope that things can be different for them if they just let themselves try. Neither is right in their beliefs for what can come of the relationship, and neither is wrong. That's the greatest tragedy, and what stays with you: in the end, what they believe and who is right doesn't matter.
Jake Gyllenhaal is superb, taking Jack from his more usual ebullience to his occasional but deep melancholy. Heath Ledger is nothing short of amazing, combining the subtlety of Ennis's stunted emotional state with the rare bursts of emotion that inevitably come.
The cinematography is gorgeous, the script is perfect down to every single word, and the direction is outstanding. If I left the movie disappointed, it was because I was supposed to be; I was disappointed that things couldn't be different.
Likewise, for the movie to tell this story with all its beauty and tragedy, it couldn't be different, and it simply couldn't be any better.