Powerful and poignant. I wish it knew how to quit haunting my thoughts

Rating: 10/10 (20 June 2006)

"If you can't fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it"
So goes the adage that Brokeback Mountain's tragic central character, Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger), lives by. In the summer of '63, two aspiring ranch hands with little to no prospects find themselves work herding sheep upon picturesque Brokeback Mountain. It is a place of desperate loneliness, and as much to their surprise as ours, the two men form a connection over that summer that develops to a lifelong relationship. "Brokeback got us good," remarks Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), during their first reunion that occurs only after four years of longing have passed since the day he and Ennis bade each other gut-wrenching goodbyes. By this time, both men have moved on and married: Ennis to his sweetheart Alma Beers (Michelle Williams) and Jack to rodeo queen Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway). They are marriages more of convenience that anything else  society would never, ever accept a relationship such as the one they share in secret.
Ennis knows this better than any other, having been forced by his father at the tender age of nine to look upon the dried up corpse of a man beaten to death by tire iron when it became common knowledge he was living with another man. Over the next twenty years, we watch as Ennis and Jack retreat for fishing trips on Brokeback Mountain, where little fishing is done and where Ennis discovers that he is never as fulfilled as when he's in the company of Jack Twist, drinking whiskey under the moonlight. Despite any romantic ideas Jack might have that the two could settle down together, Ennis, scarred by his experience as a boy, repeatedly pushes Jack away so as to deny himself the happiness of being with the one person he truly, deeply loves. By the time the film closes, you cannot help but feel your heart has been ripped out of your chest: raw, same as Ennis.
With Brokeback Mountain, all the aspects of film-making combine coherently to paint a visual expression of Annie Proulx's sparse prose under Ang Lee's delicate, consummate guidance. Writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana don't just adapt the 30-page short story; they expand upon it to fill a two-hour feature, by adding crucial moments that flesh out character and underline drama. Against a backdrop of Rodrigo Prieto's picture-perfect cinematography and Gustavo Santaolalla's emotive, expressive score, the young cast impresses. Gyllenhaal's frustration is palpable, Williams' devastation is incredibly powerful and sympathetic, but the phenomenon here is Heath Ledger: all clenched fist and clenched mouth. It's such an impossibility for him to express emotion that when he does, with his final promise to Jack, it breaks your heart.
After leaving the cinema screening of Brokeback Mountain, I was haunted for weeks by its emotional resonance. Upon a second viewing on DVD, it elicits an even greater reaction. I simply cannot comprehend how, as Ang Lee's obvious masterpiece and what has developed into the most acclaimed film in motion picture history, the Academy could fail to honour this touching, tragic, universally powerful story that carries with it  but never preaches  an important message about love it's own Best Picture statue. It's a travesty we can't fix; a shame we have to stand.