A haunting, deeply moving, life changing film.

Rating: 10/10 (19 April 2006)

I am a heterosexual woman, happily married with three children, liberal in my attitudes who went to see "Brokeback Mountain" out of curiosity. I knew very little about the movie other than the "Gay Cowboy" label and the actors involved. I'll admit I was on edge not really looking forward to viewing homosexual sex, but was interested in what all the hype was about. The first sex scene in the tent was shocking, but the rest of the film was a good "forbidden love" story. That was nearly 2 months ago and I have not been able to shake "Brokeback Mountain" out of my thoughts. After my first viewing the story kept creeping back into my head and heart. Within 3 days I had to go back to the theater (alone - which I never do) to see it again. I then bought Annie Proulx's collection of short stories "Close Range" which includes "Brokeback Mountain" and read the original story (as well as several others). I began listening to the Academy Award nominated (and winning) score via NPR's internet site and then bought the soundtrack. Many nights I have woken up with one of the songs or part of the score running through my head. I took my husband to see it (he actually liked it more than I had anticipated) and then I saw it 2 more times at the theater by myself while my kids were at school (again something I never do). I bought the "Story to Screenplay" and read about the making of the movie. This movie has changed my attitude towards the ones I love - my husband and I make love more often with a tenderness and passion that had been lost in recent years and we are nicer and more caring towards each other in our every day dealings with one another. This has been a conscious change on my part that has elicited a sub-conscious like change in him.
This movie actually came together like a "perfect storm" with the final product "the movie" making the individual parts greater in hindsight. Diana Ossana first read Annie Proulx's short story during a bout of insomnia while she was staying in Larry Mc Murtry's home (her writing partner). She reacted, in what she later thought in the light of day was overly exaggerated, in an intensely emotional way to the pain, love, loss and regret in the story: two young, uneducated, rough men, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, from ranch families thrown together on a lonely Wyoming mountain far from others for the summer tending sheep, who fall in love and because of the social norms of the time (1963) are not ever able to fully realize a life together. When she reread it the next day she realized that her emotions of the night before were well founded and convinced Larry Mc Murtry to read the short story. Before the day was out they had written a letter to Annie Proulx to propose optioning her story for a screenplay (using their own money - something they had never done before). Their screen play expanded the sparse short story and fleshed out the 2 women Jack and Ennis eventually marry. That was 1997 and it took nearly 7 years before the movie began production. Ang Lee of "Sense and Sensibility" as well as "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" was signed on as director and they were able to then get financing. Diana Ossana had envisioned Heath Ledger as the quiet, brooding Ennis Del Mar and Larry Mc Murtry agreed after seeing Ledger's performance in "Monster Ball." The casting was "perfection": Jake Gyllenhaal as the optimistic, passionate Jack Twist; Michelle Williams as Ennis' long suffering wife; Anne Hathaway the aggressive, business minded wife of Jack; and Randy Quaid as the hard nosed rancher who hired Ennis and Jack to tend his sheep. Adding to the "perfect storm" was the excellent music by Gustavo Santaolalla - this is a score that will rise up in your mind and twist your heart in ways you never thought possible. The cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto (he also has a bit part as the Mexican prostitute) will at times take your breath away.
This is a movie to be experienced fully - the story, the music, the unbelievable acting by a young cast, and the unrelentingly fine directing that makes each scene relevant to the story. The slow pace at times allows one to savor the moments, the feelings, the things unsaid, the facial expressions and body language that say more than one can speak in words - it is all incredible. Annie Proulx herself wrote about seeing the movie: "Seeing the film disturbed me. I felt that, as the ancient Egyptians had removed a corpse's brain through the nostril with a slender hook before mummification, the cast and crew of this film, from the director down, had gotten into my mind and pulled out images. Especially did I feel this about Heath Ledger, who knew better than I how Ennis felt and thought, whose intimate depiction of that achingly needy ranch kid builds with frightening power. It is an eerie sensation to see events you have imagined through little black marks on a page, loom up before you in an overwhelming visual experience. I realized that I, as a write, was having the rarest film trip: my story was not mangled but enlarged into huge and gripping imagery that rattle minds and squeezed hearts." See the movie!