Ang Lee's Best

Rating: 10/10 (9 December 2005)

Above all the hallmark of Lee's movies is originality: strongly realized characters hit up against each other and what comes out seems to surprise even them as it delights, affects the watcher. It helps that the point of reference here is a story by Ms. Proulx and that Larry McMurtry wrote the screenplay. But it is, first and last, an Ang Lee film and it reveals the maestro at the summit of his craft.
In brief, two guys find in each other the love of all time but can't make a life together from it. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal turn in the best performances of their young careers. They are remarkable. So is the Wyoming landscape. Too bad that all those jokes about "a gay cowboy movie" on late night TV will make a lot of people shy away. This movie can't be pigeonholed. The well of humanity it touches takes it beyond any facilely-applied label. It's a masterpiece.Jim Smith