Powerful performance by Ledger propels the film

Rating: 9/10 (4 January 2006)

Though the film sometimes treats homosexuality as if it were some strange, inexplicable force (the film's director, writers, stars, and for all I know the set decorators, are heterosexual, a fact which should be considered against the backdrop of the possibility of a film about Americans made entirely by Europeans, a film about women made entirely by men, etc.), it does create, at least for me, a mood which is hard to shake. Slow moving or contemplative, depending on your mood or taste. The best thing in the film is Ledger's brilliant portrait of a man so constrained by fear that he cannot live--or love. Watch for Anne Hathaway's brilliant last scene as Jack Twist's wife, talking on the phone to Ledger (Ennis). It's a master class in acting done by an actress theoretically too young to know how to do this.